


The Wanted

by SyllableFromSound



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Alternate Universe - Western, Bandits & Outlaws, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Violence, Nonbinary Character, Trans Female Character, Trauma, Western, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 12:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyllableFromSound/pseuds/SyllableFromSound
Summary: "They had nearly as many names as they had stories told about them. Ram. Raven. Red. Devil. Deputy. Outlaw. Short 'n Long. Ghosts of the Rapids...He won't tell you whether they were dead before they hit the water. He won't even tell you whether they were shot at all. Maybe, as some say, the two of them just tipped, hand-in-hand, falling backwards over the edge together as children let themselves fall into soft grass."Hurley's a bounty hunter, the Raven is an outlaw, and no one's there to hear you out in the middle of the desert.(The 50k+ Old West Hurloane AU Where Hurley Becomes A Thief Too that no one asked for. For the 2019 TAZ Bang! T for non-graphic violence and discussions of death/injury/trauma.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey what's up so do you ever enter a gay fugue state for the entire summer and then finally wake up to find that you've written 52,000+ words of bullshit? 
> 
> Anyway, here is my fic for the TAZ Bang! I'm so grateful for the people who put this project on and participated in it. It's motivated me to complete the longest single piece of writing in my whole life, and I'm so excited to finally share it after almost three months of writing daily writing. I had such a good time writing it, and I really hope you do too!
> 
> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang!

_They had nearly as many names as they had stories told about them. _

_Ram. Raven. Red. Devil. Deputy. Outlaw. Short 'n Long. Ghosts of the Rapids. _

_What happened to them depends on who you ask. Some say the Raven twisted the Ram, but then again, the Ram might have been born with badness in the marrow of their bones. They say the outlaw was a thief, that her glittering horde still lies somewhere out in the desert among the canyons. They say the deputy was a sharpshooter with twenty notches on their pistol, one for every man who tried to take them. They say they were very much in love._

_Maybe they still are. People who camp alone by the river say at night, they hear too-loud whispers over the rush. _

_If you ask the only man who was there that day, he'll tell you the same thing every time, and nothing more: "They went over the cliff and into the river. Never found the bodies."_

_He won't tell you whether they were dead before they hit the water. He won't even tell you whether they were shot at all. Maybe, as some say, the two of them just tipped, hand-in-hand, falling backwards over the edge together as children let themselves fall into soft grass._

* * *

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Bane says. If she so much as looks at me wrong, I’m shooting.”

Hurley whipped their head around, but Jerry and Barbra didn’t notice. Their horses dragged behind at a dull clop against the soft dust of the ground, while the two of them leaned toward each other as they whispered. Hurley slowed their mare and fell back themself, to hear them better over the jangling of the stirrups.

“Yeah, like you’d be that quick on the draw,” Barbra responded. 

“Aw, fuck you,” Jerry sneered. “Anyway, I’ve heard this one killed a man with a pebble to the forehead, never mind what she can do with a bullet. I’m not taking chances.”

“You’re both gonna get yourselves killed if you’re that trigger-happy in the face of an outlaw,” Hurley called, loudly enough for both them and Sheriff Bane to hear. They met the simultaneous glares of the two men with a broad grin. 

That diminished rather quickly when they heard, “Hurley, I told you this canyon echoes. Be careful.”

Hurley turned away before they could see Jerry and Barbra poorly hiding their snickers. When they looked at Bane riding in front of them, he beckoned with a nod of his head, and they came forward. There was just enough room for them to ride alongside him between the high walls of the sinuous canyon. The sun was at its highest, and rays shot down straight through the gap. It was brilliant enough to make the clear sky look nearly white when they looked straight up. Over the days of travel in the desert, their dark freckles had grown darker and multiplied across their thick, warm brown shoulders and back.

“The problem,” he began rather conspiratorially, “is anyone can take a look at a thousand-dollar ‘wanted’ poster and convince themself they’re a bounty hunter.” They followed his gaze as he slowly looked back to where Barbra was harassing Jerry with a wriggling scorpion he’d found. 

Hurley giggled, then covered their mouth. “I wouldn’t suppose that a lot of bravado is all you need to be good at it.”

“You’re right about that. Not to mention that the people who come in guns blazing are also the ones who turn tail the quickest when things get to be too much for them.

“Well, I hope not, if you’re here to keep them in check.”

“And that’s why I asked you to come along.” His crow’s feet deepened as he glanced at them with a smile. “You’d rather rush in to stop trouble rather than to start it. Don’t think I missed how you break up all those tavern fights and call out folks who are hustling or stealing in there.”

They shrugged. Pride rose warm in their chest like the shimmering air that wafted from the desert’s ground. “I’d like to think I’m better at finishing fights than starting them, these days.”

“Well, sure, but I mean more than that. I need someone like you who wants to stop conflict before it starts. That’s what I see in you. You get so many people out here trying to collect bounties who want to be heroes, shooting first and asking questions never. Like they wanna be one-person juries. Can’t have that. You bring outlaws back alive whenever you can so they can go through the same damn justice system everyone else has to deal with.” His pale blue eyes glanced and gleamed their way. “We can work on your patience.”

They laughed again and bit their lip. “Well, I wouldn’t have come with if it weren’t for you. I wouldn’t be doing much of anything at the moment if it weren’t for you.”

“Don’t thank me. You’ve got promise. Can’t do anything about that.” His voice took on its typical instructive tone. “Now, all that being said, you’ve got to look out for yourself out here. The Raven’s lightning-quick and knows this land and clearly doesn’t mind killing, as you know. I don’t suspect she’ll do much but run, but keep your guard up.”

“Have you tried tracking her down before?”

“This is what I know from other people who’ve gone after her. I think you needn’t be too worried, but…” His voice died off. His horse came to a stop. “This is the place she’s been seen before.”

Their heart began to bounce inside their chest as they thought of facing their quarry. Their horse sped up to a trot. 

“Hurley.” 

They looked behind them to find a stern-faced Bane and a posse that had stopped moving altogether. Trying to swallow down the blush working up their face, they got back in line behind Bane. 

The four moved single-file through the canyon. At various points, Bane sometimes whispered, more often simply signalled with his hands for one of them to break off and explore another path. They would return empty-handed.

Quiet filled up the gaps between the stone walls, washed over them like the long-dead rivers that had once carved out these canyons. The soft crunch of the horse’s feet against the grit of the ground was all that came to them. 

Bane held up a hand for them to stop. Hurley heard, then, just for a moment, the sound of hoofbeats that belonged to none of their rides. With the way sound played off the stone, they couldn’t determine how far it was. The group kept forward, turned once.

And then a flash of dark around a corner. 

Their galloping set the whole place rumbling as they all shot off. Hurley’s horse nearly skittered on the sand several times as they whipped the reins sharply to the side. It was what was necessary to wind through the narrow passages that curled deeper and deeper into the canyon.

Whenever there was a widening of the path that might allow more than one horse through at a time, Hurley tried to shove past the others. They had to be up front. They could barely see anything past Bane, leading at the front and shouting things they couldn’t hear.

He grabbed his lasso as they came around one bend. There was nothing on his face except the same solid determination as usual, only sharpened. 

The posse pulled around the corner and came to an instant halt, scraping hooves stirring sand. Hurley craned their neck to see the dead end at the end of this passage, a sheer wall of redstone. But no Raven.

Not until there was sound well behind the whole group as the dark form reappeared and shot off in the other direction.

They kept pace with the rest of the group, until they didn't. By degrees, they drew their horse back into a canter, then a slow trot. As expected, the others were too fixated on their path to notice that they were losing Hurley, as they leaned low over the manes of their galloping animals. The posse twisted around a sharp corner and out of their sight.

_You're thinking with your belly again,_ they heard their mother say, while she poked the round ball of their seven-year-old tummy.

None of them were about to outpace the Raven while she stayed three turns ahead of them. She knew the canyon, maybe so well that she knew where her pursuers were just by hearing the echo of them along the red stone walls. But if just one of them could out-maneuver...

They bid their horse to turn around and move at a quiet walk. This was not a betrayal of Bane's orders, they convinced themself. Not really, anyway. Maybe he had told them to keep up with the group, but surely the higher order was to catch the thief. If they did that, he could forgive the unconventional methods.

And they would do it.

They started to pick their way through the tangle of paths. The Raven had traveled back this way, running in front of the posse, only to disappear around a bend and re-emerge behind them all. This, perhaps, was where a number of the narrow natural trails converged. They might part only to circle back and rejoin each other elsewhere. If that were true, she would be likely to stay near the place where she had a number of exit routes. This was where she expected she'd be safe. That was good for Hurley.

They chose their directions nearly at random, only knowing that they wanted to roughly parallel the path that their team had been taking before. They could meet up with them and maybe head the Raven off, if they could only keep track of where the others might be. They went left, left again, right. When they reached a slot-like passage in the rock face too narrow for a horse, they bit their lip, then dismounted and left the gelding behind as they sidled sideways through.

Occasionally, their calls and the pounding of their horses' hooves would come to Hurley, and they would stop to hear more. By then, though, the echoes would have already receded. It was impossible to pinpoint the place where the sounds came from--they got bounced around and lost in the network of paths until they seemed entirely disembodied. They might as well have been the chattering of specters wafting their way in the cavernous, lonely canyon. Right, left. No route here was distinct from the rest. For all they knew, they were wearing circles into the sand. 

Right, right again, and then, suddenly, no further. They pulled themself back behind a boulder and instinctively clapped a hand over their mouth. It was some time before they were able to make themself crane their neck back around, to determine whether they had seen what they'd thought they'd seen.

From behind, they saw a figure sitting atop her steed. Long black duster turned sepia by the caked-on dust of the desert and a wide-brimmed, jet bolero with a sharp feather sticking up straight from the hatband. She was still. Just waiting.

Their mouth felt dry. At some point, they realized that it was gaping open, and they snapped it shut. The clack of their teeth sounded far too loud in their mouth. 

They took a single step around the large stone that they hid behind. The half-elf's ears swiveled around and moved to pick up on sound. They seemed to fixate on nothing, though. Certainly, she didn't look Hurley's way as they gripped the long rope and positioned it in their hands. Their every movement was measured now. With every scrape of the rough hemp coil against their fingers, they felt certain that she would turn around, but she didn't. Another step, placed on the ground deliberately. The sand did not crunch beneath them. 

From where they stood behind the boulder, they did not have a clear shot at her, but they did not dare step out fully into the open. They could still get her, though. They would still get her. It probably should have been fear that sent the eager blood blazing through them--the fear that she would see them and be gone in an instant, the fear that they would be gone in an instant when she spun to blow them away--but that wasn't it. This was the familiar thrill of the final blow and the bullseye. It ran through them whenever they knew they were about to prove what they could do. They clenched their lasso as the world shrunk to what was right in front of them. What was right in front of them was an opportunity.

They threw. The Raven had a half-second to look at the loop that had snapped tight around her ankle before Hurley pulled with all they could, and down she went to the ground. When she impacted, it was with a choked noise that might have been a yell, had the wind not been punched out of her lungs. 

They almost wanted to cheer as her horse spooked and ran off.

But then they turned to look at just what it was they had caught. The figure at the end of their tether lay on her back for several moments, unmoving. For a moment, they wondered if she had been stunned by a blow to the head. They saw that, certainly, she was still hurting from the way her spine had slammed into the baked-hard earth. Low, creaking groans came from the back of her throat along with her exhales.

Suddenly, as though startled awake, her eyes snapped wide open to the sky. She scrambled to push herself onto her elbows look at the place where her ride had been, then spun her whole body around to face Hurley.

There was a bandana tied around her face, black and patterned with feathers, puffing out slightly with every breath. It covered up everything except her eyes, but the eyes were enough. Now unshielded by the hat that had fallen from her head, they snatched Hurley's gaze and held it tight. They were big, for one thing, and youthful, with the red-brown skin around them unlined. What hit them, though, was how they went wide and got wider, caught bare and off-guard. Like they took in everything and understood none of it. Disbelief at being brought down so far and so fast.

Hurley liked making people believe they could do things previously thought impossible. Usually.

The Raven's eyes flitted down to the rope around her foot twice, the first time almost as an afterthought, the second with a look of mounting rage, and it occurred to Hurley just then that they had not really restrained her much at all. They tightened their grip on the lasso just as she went to stand and yanked so that she could not get her footing. She fell back onto her but with an indignant grunt and tried again. They pulled again, becoming more aware all the while that they were just bringing her closer to them. 

That was when the sound returned to them like rocks tumbling over each other. Both they and the Raven turned just in time to see Barbra and Jerry come riding up, each of them tossing a rope around her torso and pinning her arms to her sides. She squirmed against the bonds for a few moments and then went still, glaring between the three of them there. That was that. 

A fine thread of blood had begun to trickle out from beneath her hairline, barely skirting her eye, where she could not wipe it away. It ran all the way down to her neck. Hurley's doing. They were about to step forward to take a look at her when they felt a large hand press down on their shoulder.

Bane had a grin for them. "Knew it was a good idea bringing you along." They smiled back, and while it was genuine, it must not have been enough. "Something the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing much, it's just..." They looked back at the woman who had been scruffed and pulled to her knees. Barbra still had her by the back of the collar, with a bit of her hair caught in his fist. Something was the matter with Hurley, yes. But they didn't know what, and the best they could do was shrug and murmur, "She's younger than I thought."

He gave the thief an assessing look. "Not more than a year or two younger than you, I'd say. Anyway, why would she be older? Outlaws don't last long out here, Hurley, not the way they live." He walked forward then, presumably to tell the boys to ease up on the lassos before she started to suffocate. Her breathing had already turned shallower as she struggled to expand her chest.

He didn't do that. Instead he stepped close to her so that the tips of his boots nearly touched her knees. He cast her into shadow as he stood over her, making her lean back in order to match his gaze. Then, with a forefinger and thumb, he gripped the mask around her face and pulled it down in one motion. They saw all of her hard countenance now. A pale scar ran over the bridge of her nose, another down across her lips in a perfect vertical.

With the same hand that had felt warm and strong on Hurley's shoulder a moment ago, he suddenly grabbed her jaw. His fingers pressed into the skin of her cheek, his thumb dug into the bone beneath her ear. They released a minute gasp. They could see it from where they stood, how he kept squeezing as though to wring something out of her, which perhaps he did when her mouth was forced open a bit. 

"So that's what you look like," he said coolly. "You'll really get your picture in all the papers now, isn't that right?"

There would be crescent-moon indentations in her flesh for hours. He dug and dug.

Her expression stayed hard and solid as stone. Her lower jaw was gritted and jutted. Hurley didn't understand how any of this was happening, but mostly they didn't know how she wasn't even trying to pull away. How she stood it rather than trying to whip her head out of his grasp. That was what they would have done, they thought.

He dropped his hand, finally. "Make sure you tie her up tight. She's been known to try sneaking away."

This was the only time she fought, really. Jerry came up behind her and she glanced backwards, gritted her teeth, got one of her feet underneath her and tried to stand before being shoved back to the ground. A hand on her bent back, right at the vertebra where the neck met the spine. She kept struggling as her arms were crossed behind her, with each wrist bound against the opposite elbow. It was only when Barbra pulled back on the rope hard enough to make her wince that she stopped. That left her leaning over a little. Her chest and the muscles of her belly worked hard on every rasping inhale. Her breathing stayed heavy and open-mouthed when she was half-pulled and half-kicked to her feet and started walking behind the horses as they moved in the direction of their base camp.

On the way back, they kept turning back to look. She just walked. She drove her gaze into the ground like a plough and hardly moved or lifted it, except to glare when she felt the occasional extra tug on the ropes around her torso. Other than that, she looked almost listless. Concussed, maybe, they thought. But she wasn't uncoordinated or struggling to focus. She simply wasn't reactive.

At one point, Jerry, at Bane’s behest, tossed them the gun that he had pulled off her. It was an older model, but it looked clean, at least cleaner than the rest of her. When they rubbed their finger inside the barrel, it came out immaculate rather than being blackened with old traces of powder, as though it had almost never been fired at all. They tried several times, and after that, looked at their incongruously clean hands. 

"Sheriff..." they started once they were back at the base camp. They had just watched the boys shove the Raven into the wagon and lock her inside. "You're going to have them untie her first, right?"

"She can sit in there for a little while like that. It won't do any harm. Good for tiring her out a bit."

"Yes it will," they responded without waiting a beat. "That's dangerous."

"It's only for a few hours, Hurley. It won't hurt anything."

They tried to keep from gaping at him. "It'll definitely hurt. It probably hurts now."

“Maybe you’re right. Still, better that then having her try to bust out and run.”

“What could she possibly do from inside a wagon?”

There was a force and urgency in their voice that they heard too late. He half-turned his head towards them, just enough that they could see the widening of his eye and the raising of his brow. He wasn't upset, but something in his voice suggested "yet." "Hurley, you caught an outlaw on your first go, and that's to be commended, but you're still new to all of this. I've been here plenty of times. Trust me when I say I know what to do here." He nodded towards said outlaw, now unseen behind the door. "You suppose we were too rough?"

"I..." They bit the inside of their cheek. Hurley was included in that "we." Only one of them among the group, after all, had made the Raven bleed. "I just think we shouldn't do anything unnecessary."

He nodded, not looking away from the locked wagon. "I'm not surprised you'd say that. I thought the same thing when I started out. Wouldn't surprise me if most bounty hunters do, though good luck finding someone else willing to admit it."

"I doubt Barbra and Jerry felt that way starting out," they mumbled.

"You might be surprised. Listen, it is rough. And if you were to be in my place someday and lead a posse of your own, and you didn't want to do this, I wouldn't take offense. Hell, if I'm not all broken hips and arthritis by then, maybe I'll come along with you and take your orders." He chuckled deeply. They didn't. "But keep something in mind when you do all that. People like you and me, we think of protecting the innocent as protecting ourselves. You'll do what you need to do to protect people like you'd protect yourself. Sometimes you get dirty that way."

That, in their mind, was as lovely and noble of an idea as could be, and also had fuck-all to do with anything. "But Sheriff--"

"Hurley," he said. The word was a quiet warning. "Let yourself learn first."

They stared at him even after he turned around to walk away, wondering what exactly it was about "this" that required harming someone who no longer posed a threat. For a long time, they stood dumbly and watched his back as he strode back towards the fire pit.

Again, this was not disobedience, they told themself as they covertly unlocked the wagon door while the others ate dinner a ways off. Bane said he wanted to bring his prisoners back alive? Then they were going to make sure this one stayed alive, whether he liked it or not.

The late amber light struggled in through the tiny barred window, getting caught up in the smoky dust that rose from the floor. It was just bright enough to see the way the Raven lifted her hanging head, letting the long black hair fall away from where it covered her cheek. Without turning their way, she let her gaze slice across them.

After far too long of a pause, they opened with, "Hello," since it seemed like as good an introduction as any.

Behind the airtight line of her mouth, they could tell, her teeth were gritted. They could almost hear the scrape of them.

"That looks uncomfortable," they continued, stepping forward, because the alternative was backing down. "I'll get those ropes off of you if you'll let me."

They kept coming towards her until they saw her pulling her leg back slowly, winding up for a kick. "Hey. Easy." They took another small step forward, still out of her strike range. Their voice did not rise above a murmur. "Easy. There's no catch here, I promise. I'm still going to have to chain your ankles, but I'll untie you so you can move around. You just have to let me, please."

When they kept walking forward, nothing in her changed, including the intensity of her glare. But she didn't seem primed to kick them anymore either, which was good enough for them. 

She tracked their every motion, twisting her neck around to look at them over her shoulder as they went to undo the knots at her wrists. When their fingers brushed hers, she flinched, curled her hands up into fists. But they didn't miss the long sigh and slumping of her shoulders when the bonds fell away, the way her eyes shut slowly.

They moved so that they were back in front of her and saw, without a moment to spare, the way she eyed the key to the cuffs that had just been locked around her legs. They pulled back the hand that held it just as she swiped at it, catching only the air. Well, that escape attempt had taken all of thirty seconds for her to concoct. The three-day journey back to Goldcliff would be exciting, at least.

"Nice try," they commented, keeping their voice high and light. They dropped the key into their breast pocket and reached for their canteen. "Do you want water?"

She looked at it like it was the first she had ever seen. When they held it out a little further to her, though, she brought her gaze back to them and kept it there. It didn't move away even as she took the metal container from them and unscrewed the cap. Finally, if they were not mistaken, they saw something else other than the bitterness in her, even if it wasn't gone entirely. Her head was angled curiously, to eye them as though she were looking through a keyhole.

"I'm Hurley, by the way. I know you didn't ask, which was a bit rude, but I thought if you needed--"

"It's not going to work."

They stopped. In an instant, her lips had become stretched thin into a tight smile. It stayed unchanged on her face even as Hurley searched it for answers. She didn't open her mouth to laugh a low, heavy laugh, dredged up like phlegm. 

"What's not going to wo--"

She held up a finger to halt them as she brought up their canteen to her mouth and tipped her entire head back. They lost count of how many swallows she took, but they did wonder whether she was planning on leaving any for them. Finally, she pulled it away with a loud, refreshed exhale and tossed it back into their lap, half as heavy. "You," she began, casually wiping her mouth, "are trying to make this easier on yourself. You think if you throw me a bone or two I'll be docile and not give you any trouble while you're dragging me off to prison. Well, go fuck yourself, little Red." She dragged out the last sentence like she had all day to say it. Her voice had a sing-song tilt, swinging like a head rocking from side to side, slathered in mock sweetness.

They stayed sitting on their butt in front of her. Well. In all fairness, they didn't really know what else they should have expected. They ran a hand through the short puff of almost-auburn curls on the top of their head, of which they were suddenly quite conscious. "Fine, I'll go fuck myself," they mumbled. There was no truth to what she said, but they doubted there was any way to convince her of that. "Can I at least have your name, since I gave you mine? Though it seems like you forgot it already."

"My name is whatever you think it is, Red."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What have you heard me called? The Raven, I'm sure." She gave them a curl of her lips that was a smirk and a sneer and a snarl all at once. "What else?"

They matched her hard stare. "They call you Black Devil," they answered quietly.

She looked amused, but not surprised. 

"You seem pretty nonchalant about all this."

"What? Getting harassed by people like you? Yeah, you could say I'm used to it."

They had to almost chuckle at that. "Harassment seems like a stretch. What did you expect anyway? You think people will just ignore the murder of an innocent man and an unbroken streak of robberies stretching from one end of the territory clear to the other? That's not the kind of thing you get away with forever. If not us, some other posse would've--"

"What did you say?" 

For the second time, she brought them to a stop. While they had been speaking, the Raven had been staring at the spot of floor between her chained feet with slowly widening eyes. Her expression had gradually eroded into perplexion, her furrowed brow loosening into surprise. Now she turned to face Hurley directly. 

They found their voice again. "What do you mean?"

"About the murder."

Her bewilderment was genuine. Hurley could not see how it could have been otherwise, with the way that she blinked fast, as though trying to clear her vision of sleep in the morning. But she should have known, at least, that the murder conviction was a possibility. "I said we can't just ignore it." 

"Who..." The word came out cracked as her parched lips. She cleared her throat, then. She swallowed her spit and seemed to pull something back inside herself along with it, something that she had let spill out by accident. Her eyes didn't look quite so wild, even as she breathed more quickly. "So who do they say I killed?" 

She hadn't a goddamn clue.

"Bank teller. A Mr. Miles Abernathy, from the First Bank of Dry Oak. He was killed during the burglary. A whole bunch of witnesses spotted someone with your description running from the place." They weren't sure if the last sentence was to inform the Raven or to give themself a reminder. "You don't remem--you didn't know?"

"Didn't hear that, no." She had been nodding along as they spoke, in a way that looked like someone still learning how to nod.

"So you didn't do it?"

She acted as if she hadn't heard.

"Well..." They grasped at anything. "Well, if you didn't do it, that'll come out in the trial."

That brought her back, seemingly, to herself. Her eyes went cold and narrow again, squinting at more than seeing what was before her. "Get out," she muttered, not looking their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't forget to review if you liked it!


	2. Chapter 2

The following morning saw Bane leave with the others to go scout. There were plenty of other outlaws in this part of the desert aside from the Raven, he said in justification, and just because she was the party’s main objective didn’t mean they should miss out on opportunities. Hurley managed to convince themself that it was an honor to be entrusted with guarding the Raven back at camp, both because it genuinely was and because they didn’t think they could afford a second argument over the fact that just maybe he should consider the one person who’d actually managed to lasso a criminal to be something of an asset to a scouting party. 

Though they probably would have chosen to argue about that regardless, had it not been for the fact that they had a curiosity to satisfy while they were left alone at the camp.

The men weren't even out of sight when Hurley went over to open the wagon door. 

"Me again!"

"Outstanding," muttered the Raven, glancing heavenward as though locked in place half-way through an eye-roll.

They knelt in front of her and reached out. "Hands, please."

"You think I'm going to just let you cuff me some more?"

"I'm going to shackle your wrists, but then I'll undo the ones on your feet so you can walk around better," they answered patiently. "It's not good for you to have your ankles shackled too long. It'll start to get painful."

"Take off the ones around my feet first."

"I'm not stupid, uh, Devil, was it?"

"Then I'm not letting you do shit to me."

Hurley thought, then shrugged. "I can't make you do anything. All I know is it's not good for you to be chained the way you are for too long, and I thought you'd want to change that sooner rather than later. So you don’t get hurt.”

Neither her expression nor her position had changed since they had walked in, and it wasn't changing now. But she didn't respond, which, they hoped against hope, meant she could be thinking it over. 

Without warning, she thrust out her hands toward them. 

After they had finished fastening and unfastening chains, they turned to her and waited for her to make eye contact. When, after what must have been half a minute, she finally did, they nodded their head in the direction of the open wagon door and then stood. 

They turned when they reached the threshold to find that she was still sitting on the floor, examining them with one cocked eyebrow. "Don't you want to go outside? You can if you want." She only kept looking at them, so they went on. "I think it'd be a good idea for you to walk around more, for one. So you're not just sitting and getting stiff."

There was another beat. Then, glaring all the while, she stood up, took two steps forward, and then plopped down again onto the floor of the wagon. Hurley was certain that had her wrists not been cuffed, she would have crossed her arms to cement the pouting look.

They turned away from her so that they would not snort out a laugh. They were reminded of the grousing of their siblings when they were all very small. Those were simple and fun memories, so Hurley tried to enjoy them without thinking too hard about them. Before they could remember anything else, as they sat in front of the firepit outside, they called into the wagon, "Can I ask you something?" They didn't wait for a response before going on, "Why didn't you try to shoot me when I caught you? You could've."

They waited some time for an answer. For awhile, it seemed that she would not give it at all. Then: "I wasn't quick enough. What else would you expect?"

But it wasn't just a matter of not being quick on the draw. She hadn't even thought to reach for it while her hands were free.

The morning was otherwise wordless. All throughout it, the winds came on with the sound of ocean waves in their ears. Gusts sent the loose sand skittering across the ground like sideways rain. More than once, near-empty canteens began to roll away, and Hurley had to jog to retrieve them. One got nearly lifted off the ground. 

“Shit.”

They turned to see the Raven leaning her head out of the wagon. She was turned to the side, eyes fixed on something far off. A moment later, she pulled herself back inside and shut the door behind her. 

Hurley turned all the way around to squint in the direction she had been looking. Where the cornflower sky met the near-orange earth, there was a thick and muddy smudge. It stretched almost as far as they could see to the left and right. A thin line on the horizon, until, too soon, it wasn’t, and it grew and bloomed before their eyes into clouds, the towering clouds of a storm, except that these were billows of dust. Too big to go around, too quick to outrun. Even if they had had any option other than staying put at the camp. 

They hurried into the wagon, only for the Raven to snap, “Don’t be stupid. Don’t you know what to do in one of these?” When they didn’t answer, she continued, “Fuck’s sake. You need to put a wet bandana over your mouth.”

They were too surprised to do anything but obey. They came back into the small space after they were done and remembered that the wagon didn’t lock from the inside. 

They couldn’t even cough. That’s what they found when it finally came, after the wind shook down the wood of the wagon and made it creak, after the sun no longer shone. They couldn’t cough, no matter how desperately they wanted to, because immediately after a coughing fit, they would automatically gasp and inhale, and what they would inhale was the air that was now more dust than air. They had hoped that the lack of openings in the wagon would prevent the worst of it, but even so, the fine, fine dust came in through the single tiny window and through the gaps between the slats and through the crack in the door. They felt that every time they breathed, their lungs were filling and turning to a pair of hourglasses. 

The chill, though, was what surprised them. As soon as the light was blocked out, the heat, once nearly stifling inside the enclosed space, rapidly drained away. In its place came a cold that soaked into their bones. They had always known that the desert could be as cold as it was hot, but it was always the cold that came as a shock to their bones. 

All of this came to them in darkness. They didn’t open their eyes once as the storm enveloped them, though they felt the dust collecting along their squeezed eyelids. It stuck to the corners of their eyes where the tears gathered as they struggled not to let out a cough.

It was only when, after gods-know-how-long, the wind stopped that they looked. The haze of unsettled particles in the air gave the world a sepia tone. But they made out the small piles of dust along the edges of the floor. 

The Raven was still beside them. As they turned to look at her, they found her with her eyes closed and her head slumped against her shoulder. She breathed, faintly. 

It took them several tries before they could get out a sound, with the way their throat had become coated in a layer of dirt. “Hey,” they finally managed to croak as they moved in front of her, “are you--?”

In an instant, a pair of hands slammed against their sternum and knocked them back. They caught themself on their elbows before their back could slam into the ground, but by that time, the Raven had gotten to her feet, suddenly not dazed in the slightest. Before they could do anything, she reached into their pocket and pulled out the key to the cuffs. 

Hurley rolled over to look at her upright. She had started to move away, fumbling with the key as she struggled to unlock the shackles despite the small amount of slack the chain afforded her. That bought the time they needed. They grabbed her and dragged her to the ground with one pull. She growled, but before she could push back, they shoved her chest back to the ground with one hand and then pinned her hands above her head with the other. She flexed against them for a moment before going still and wild-eyed, with a heaving chest. 

They stared down at her. “You know, you’re not as strong as you look,” they said hoarsely, still panting.

She just huffed.

Once they got the key back, they got up to push the door open, slowly. They stepped into the reformed outside in order to do what they always did, which was to deal with what was in front of them--with the fire pit full of dust, with the water full of dust, with the dust that had formed drifts against the wagon and buried the wheels hopelessly.

When the posse was not back by midday, Hurley began to wonder. 

When the hottest part of the day arrived, when the whole party would normally stop and rest, they thought that perhaps the others were doing that now, wherever they were.

When the sun began to sink, they waited for far too long to build a fire. They weren’t especially good at doing that, anyway--with how long it took them most of the time, they might as well wait around for the others to return rather than struggling themself. Anyway, Bane normally built the fires, letting one strike of flint against flint ignite the tinder. They had even seen him do it with sticks, faster than anyone else. When the color had left the sky, they finally went at it, and the effort they exerted was almost enough to get them to stop shivering as the evening chill overtook them. 

It wasn’t until quite late in the evening, when the wail of the coyotes had been ongoing for hours and they had nothing to do but sit and listen to it, that they could no longer prevent themselves from considering it. The storm had been moving in the same direction that the posse had been traveling, far faster than they had been traveling. This part of the desert was flat, far more open and barren than the areas full of sheltered canyons or stone formations. Was there anything out there to act as a shield from the wind? Was there anything there, even, that stood taller than Bane? How much worse would it have been without the wagon as shelter?

They struggled, more and more, to keep their feet on the ground. To keep from feeling that they were floating detached from the rest of the world in the night. Like a boat whose moorings had silently come loose and had begun to drift out to sea unnoticed in the dark. They tried not to believe that they were alone. It didn’t work. They were.

They stared and stared out to the east. There was no way that they could have slept, even if they had felt like it. Eyes were on them, always. Even when the Raven seemed to sleep--which she didn’t much--they didn’t allow themself to be convinced. They had learned their lesson. They knew they were being scrutinized. Of course she would try anything if they so much as managed to doze, and while they had dropped the key into their boot so that she didn’t have a prayer of sneaking off with it without their noticing, her quickness still posed too much of a risk. They kept on looking as yellow leaked into the sky with the approach of morning. Everything up to their eyeballs ached. They had not even blinked enough overnight.

They almost surprised themself when, as the sun began to shine at full strength, they uttered quietly, "They're not coming back."

"Oh, your posse?" came the response from behind them, from the woman lying on her back and lackadaisically tossing a coin into the air, though they had been speaking mostly to themself. "Yeah, I doubt it. Not if they got caught out in that shit."

They physically flinched. Having someone else voice it was somehow even worse. But they had to refocus. Not think about what had happened and not think about the likelihood of Bane’s return in the future. There was only what was in front of them. They took a breath and turned to her, saying, "Since we might be out here together for a bit, I figured I'd ask again. What's your name?"

With a degree of petulance that would have been impressive if it weren't infuriating, she replied, "The Raven."

"Right. What's your actual name that you use when you're not hiding behind a criminal alias?"

"Devil."

"Okay, listen up. I know you're giving me a hard time because you're upset and need to take it out."

"Oh, please don't misunderstand me. I'm giving you a hard time because it's funny." She rolled over onto her belly. "And what do you mean we're gonna be out here for awhile?”

“I mean I’m getting you back to Goldcliff.”

She hissed a laugh. “Right. Of course. By yourself, with your broken, horseless wagon.”

“I didn’t say I’d try to do it by myself.” They came closer to where she sat, next to one of the half-buried wagon wheels. “All I need to do is keep us alive until someone passes by who can go and get help.”

Her expression changed back to ire now. “You’re out of your fucking mind! There isn’t nearly enough traffic this far out here to just wait around for some rescue. We’ll die sitting around here first.”

“No, we won’t,” they said simply. They had made a promise to Bane. They committed, then and there. 

She only glowered at them. Then, quick as anything, she went to knock them off their feet, but they were expecting it this time, and they weren’t slow either. They pushed her back down and, before she could recover, clapped a chain around her foot. They attached it to the unmoving wheel and then backed away from her. 

They shouldn’t have looked back. They wouldn’t have, had they not heard the chains jingling. She pulled back on them for a bit, as though to test the strength of them, and then stopped. Something shifted. She quit resisting, suddenly. The fight fled her in a way that was more obvious to them than when she had first been caught two days ago. (Had it really only been two days?) She stared at the line of metal links that swung lightly between her ankle and the wagon. Then, she hunched her shoulders and pressed her mouth and nose into the collar of her duster. Her thick hair kept most of her face concealed.

It was just for now, they reminded themself. Just until they knew what they were doing.

* * *

She didn’t stop trying to get away, though. Over the next day and a half, she went for it. It came to be routine far too quickly. Most often, she’d just try to reach into their pockets or socks or wherever she thought they’d stashed the key. That was easy enough to swat off. The trouble came when she started trying to do things like knock them to the ground as she had before, for offenses such as coming close enough to give her food. 

Hurley never really got hurt. Hurting them wasn’t her focus, though whether she would mind if it happened was another question. Regardless, they could handle it. Did handle it. But they didn’t want to.

At least that was activity, though. In between those instants punctuated by her anger sat hours of sagging, stagnant heat. At some point, they would have to look over their stocks of supplies, but they didn’t, yet. There was a finality and an admission inherent in portioning out their remaining resources amongst just two people.

The worst incident came when they and the Raven ended up tousling on the ground, and both accidentally rolled over the still-hot coals of the fire.

When it was over, as Hurley looked over their own wounds, the Raven, unsurprisingly, grumbled, “This is still your fault.” The once-entertaining childishness was beginning to gall.

As she started to lean over, her expression tightened into a wince, and she quickly straightened again. Their eyes snapped to the red opening in her skin the size of a half-dollar. It sent blood down her spine in a thin, neat line to stain the hem of her trousers. "That one on your back is going to get infected overnight if you're not careful." They started to position themself behind her. "You can't reach back there. Here, I'll--"

The hit landed just under their nose. Pain rang through the hollows of their sinuses, reverberated through their teeth, which felt like they had been bent askew inside their gums. For an instant, as they reeled backward, they felt sure that a couple of teeth must have been knocked out, the blow was so sharp. When the familiar taste of iron hit their tongue, they knew that the inside of their mouth must have been struck open. It took a moment before they could open their eyes, instinctively squeezed shut, and pull their hand away from their mouth to find the bright blood dripping down their finger. Split lip for sure. 

They didn't move, or look up. It wasn't the pain but the shock that got to them. They'd dealt with this and worse a number of times before, but all those times they had seen the punches coming at them, through the cigar smoke and the drunken spectators' jeers, during tavern brawls. Fair fights. The hits only made them want to come back swinging harder, then. Now they didn't know what they felt--certainly not the heat of their blood under their skin as they did in those moments before--and they didn't know what to do, after days of not knowing what to do, as they sat flat on their ass in the dust and silence. They had let themself get sucker-punched. It had been awhile since the last time that had happened.

Finally, incredulous, they slowly looked away from their hand and at the person who had managed it. 

But whatever expression they had expected to see on her face--hatred, triumph--was not to be found. The Raven just gave them a wide-eyed stare, looking exactly as rattled as they felt. Her mouth was open, but she barely seemed to take air in or out, her chest hardly moving. Like the show of force had taken her by surprise, too. It made sense. Nothing she had done to them in the past few days had been anywhere near this hard. Nothing had drawn blood.

If there was any instinct in them that would make them want to retaliate, any anger, it wilted under the heavy heat as they watched her. After a few moments, she took in a breath that made her puff out like an adder and set her face into an expression too hardened and firm to be knocked off by a punch. But that was only after they saw her shiver under the sun, just briefly. That was only after they watched her eyes flicker, nervously, again and again. They realized, after few seconds, that she was looking towards the gun at their hip, towards the fire poker near their side. Things within Hurley's uncuffed reach. 

They glanced at the iron around her wrists and thought, _Fair fights_.

"Okay," they exhaled. They weren't sure what, if anything, was okay about this. All they could think to do was reach, slowly--without any movements that could be considered sudden--until their palm landed on the cloth that they had been using to wipe the blood from themself. Their body leaned back a little as they held it out towards the Raven, with the relatively clean and sand-free side out. 

She blinked. Looked at the cloth, at them, the cloth again. Blinked some more. That was when they turned away, arm still outstretched. It wouldn't help, they thought, to stare her down at a time like this. A moment or two later, they felt the fabric leave their hand, and they got up, walked a little ways off, and sat back down again. 

A big bolus sat heavy in their middle, squeezed between their lungs and their stomach. They wanted to dislodge it somehow, vomit it up or cry it out of themself so they would not have to sit with it, but they could not even know what it was they felt, and they could not muster the energy to expel it. Anyway, they weren't sure they could afford the dehydration. The alternative would have been to remove themself from it for a bit, move their body until they found a distracting change of scenery. Here, though, there was nowhere to go. It was amazing, they mused, how a stretch of open space could feel so very confining. To know that beyond every horizon was more of the same parched earth nearly nauseated them. The uninterrupted, unclouded sky pressed in on them and seemed to sting them with its blue.

Frustration sludged inside of them until, a few minutes later, the crunch of footsteps interrupted the monotony. A pair of black boots entered the edge of their vision. When they glanced a little further to the side, they saw the cloth lain back down next to them. Folded. 

As they lifted their gaze a little more, the Raven promptly swung her head in the other direction, meaning that they hadn't only imagined her looking at them, cautiously. She sat cross-legged on the ground beside them, cuffed hands on her ankles. 

This seemed like an improvement. They might have left it at that. 

Hurley never left anything at that. "You know," they heaved after gods-know-how-long, "I know you only have my word to go on, and that probably doesn't mean much to you. But I'm really not going to hurt you."

She sent them an expression that looked like it was supposed to be a glare, but that had been dulled too much. Her face loosened a moment later, and she seemed to stare at the ground. They'd had a feeling that wouldn't do anything. They were just hoping that it might help with the guilt. Not that they had much reason to feel guilt--they had done nothing wrong. Certainly, it hadn't been intentional. It was just hard not to feel bad about scaring someone that badly.

Then, suddenly, they heard shuffling and saw her turn so that her back faced them. Her shirt was now lifted to expose the wound there, right in the middle, where it was difficult to reach.

While they were still questioning their next move, if any, she snapped, "You said you had a salve or some shit? Go on, get it over with."

They shook their head a little, maybe due to the whiplash they got from this sudden turn of events. "Alright, alright. 'Please' goes a long way, you know," they mumbled, somewhat absently. They felt unnerved. The Raven was looking at them over her shoulder, brow furrowed, barely blinking. 

She absolutely hated it. As they rubbed the cream into the wound, they felt the muscles of her back tense and keep tensing, knots beneath their fingers. Her breath quickened. The fact that it was on her own terms this time hardly seemed to help. They wondered how aware she was of the way her nerves came through. Her expression, at least, remained unchanging--she never took her eyes off them. "I'm almost done," they said quietly.

"Okay."

They brought their hand away and saw her shoulders immediately sag, when they had been up around her ears before. They moved away, then. 

It took awhile, and a couple of false starts when the Raven opened her mouth only to close it without speaking, before Hurley heard, "Thanks."

"Yup."

They said nothing else. Like snow drifting down through the still desert air, something miraculous seemed to come and settle, silent, between the two of them. It wasn't trust. Not by a long shot. But something.

Nothing changed about the nights. Beyond the radius of the firelight, the darkness seemed thick and absolute enough to be tangible, like if they would drown in it if they breathed it in. The coyotes still went at it. 

The problem with the night was how acutely aware they became of the absences. They were alone during the day of course, too, effectively alone. But at night they would rest their head and get halfway to sleep before the cold snapped them back, because they weren't stoking the fire, because they were the one that had to stoke the fire, because there was no one there to relieve them from watch, because there was no one there with them at all and no more group leader that had probably been surviving stints in places like these for longer than they had been alive, because all of them were maybe dead and certainly gone. They thought of how Bane had trusted them to know what to do and how they had trusted themself with that too, and that all of this, somehow, was the disapproving universe knowing how cocky they had been to think they could ever.

Or maybe that was the lack of sleep instilling paranoia.

Howling, in fact, was not an especially apt description of what coyotes did. They screamed. Whooped and yelled like madmen at irregular intervals. Hurley wondered how far sound traveled across the flat dry stretch, how effectively such shrill sounds could pierce the thick darkness. They wondered if the lithe creatures were as close as they sounded.

At night they knew, for certain, that there was no one at their back, at least no one that was on their side. 

The tarball in the center of their ribcage had not left since earlier that day. It glommed onto other things to enlarge itself, make the squeeze inside them feel even more pronounced than it was. It tangled up their nerves. They were not sure if their senses had become sharper or merely confused. All they knew was that the shrieks sounded right in their ears now. 

They sucked in air through their barely open mouth. Damn it. This couldn't go on all night. Fear would paralyze them if they let it, and they wouldn't let it. They needed to take action. Any action would do at this point, probably, so long as they felt like they were doing fucking something other than just sitting in the dark. 

They stood, planted their feet, and tried to center themself. Tried to tap the same well of strength and sureness that they had always managed to find before at difficult times. Then, with their eyes closed, they took in a deep, steadying breath, just to feel the expansion in their chest and ground themself in the sensation. And then they used that deep and steadying breath to scream into darkness at the top of their lungs, _"I'll see you all in hell!"_

Several feet away from them, there was a sudden movement as the Raven quite ungracefully jumped inside her blankets. She briefly flailed like a startled cat before she froze sitting up, eyes silver dollar-sized as they flashed in the fire.

They huffed. "Sorry, I hope I didn't wake you."

"In what fucking world would that not have woken me?" In spite of everything, they almost had to chuckle at how frazzled she looked.

"Did you manage to sleep?" they asked instead.

"Well, not really. Not much." She looked past them into the dark. "That's, uh, that's one way to scare off the coyotes, I guess."

"Yeah. I think it worked." Indeed, the coyotes had stopped howling for just a second. Or maybe just a fraction of a second. Or maybe not at all, but they still liked to imagine that there was a pause there when those things had heard them howl back.

"Yeah, well, whatever helps you, I guess."

"Do you want me to try again?" Before she could answer, they practically pulled a throat muscle shrieking, _"I'll belly shoot every last one of you fuckers!"_

That time, from behind them, they heard either a laugh or a sneeze--it was impossible to say which. When they turned to the side, they saw the Raven with her head turned away and down, her hair curtaining either side of her face. Her chin was on her chest, as though she were burying something back inside herself. 

_"You sons of bitches! Eat my ass!"_ They heard the new levity in their own voice as they spoke through a growing grin. Screaming like an idiot helped, as it turned out. 

"They're gonna think you're joining in with them if you keep that up," the Raven commented. Her voice had changed. There wasn't the usual sourness in it, or if there was, it had been added in only with effort. A tired sigh softened it.

"Well, let them. I think I'm acting mad enough to be one of them right now." Hurley finally went back to sit next to her, curling up with their lips pressed against their knees, even as the howls went on. "I think they've got me spooked, if I'm being completely honest."

The orange light of the fire sparked off her hair as she spun to look toward them. Her eyebrows stayed raised for a moment. Then, after a moment, she began ever so casually, "Well, coyotes only attack if they think their chances of winning are good. They might take on one person, but if maybe you've got two people--that is, two who are at liberty to fight them off--then they think their chances--"

"Save it, please. I'm not stupid and I'm not about to let you go." She huffed. They huffed. Then they mumbled, "I think I just wanted to say it." 

"I think you like the sound of your own voice."

"Oh, I do." They turned to her, but she did not meet their gaze. Instead, she eyed the silver flask that rested on the ground near their boot. Maybe it was only the lack of sleep addling their mind, but they couldn't think of what the harm could possibly be. If anything, it'd be harder for her to run away drunk. Fuck it. None of this had a rulebook anyway, and if it did, they hadn't ever bothered to read it. There was a sandpapery scrape beneath their heel as they nudged the thing nearer to her and glanced at her, with a very "nobody's-looking" look. She hesitated, and then, with a thief's swiftness and silence, swept it up off the ground. "That being said, if you're thinking of trying to sleep soon, I'll shut up."

"Didn't have much luck before you started screaming bloody murder, so I don't think it'll make a difference."

They shook their head. "It's weird. I don't get scared usually. I mean, one time a guy three times my size pulled a knife on me in a fist fight and dug it into my shoulder. He was aiming for the clavicle. I didn't miss a beat. I just kept swinging with the other fist. I didn't even have a moment to feel scared."

"Gods almighty. Did you win?"

"Yeah, pretty handily, if I do say so myself. That's not so surprising, though. Once they start cheating like that, you know they're desperate. I left him napping on the bar stool. He needed a time-out."

She snickered. This time, it was a laugh for sure, one that was deep and husky and from the chest. That was new. "And did he deserve it?"

"Oh, I think so. I saw him ready to skip on the bill in there, and that barkeep was the honest type. I wasn't about to let them get screwed over. He didn't like me saying so in front of everyone, though, as you might imagine."

"Huh."

"I don't know why I'm scared by a couple of dogs now." Any pride that had built up in their chest while recounting that story left when their lungs deflated, got exuded with their breath. The tarball returned with a vengeance, this time lodging halfway up their throat, choking them. "I suppose I'm being a coward, huh?"

They sniffed in a way that they hoped to pass off as a result of the night's chill. They didn't. At the sound, she stiffened and went whale-eyed. Then, after a beat, she ventured, "Are you...?"

Hurley was a crier. They had always acknowledged that about themself, and they had never been particularly ashamed of it. Their mother had used to tell them that a little sadness got squeezed out of them with every tear. Maybe that was why it came so easily to them now. What made them want to bury their puffy face in the sand was the fact that, right now, they were sitting in front of someone taking a glass to them in search of any weakness or opening, and that, at this moment, they were riddled with holes. "Sorry," they croaked. 

"Gods' sake, don't...uh..." This, bizarrely enough, was as nervous as they had heard her sound in three days. Neither while she was locked inside the cart nor in the aftermath of the dust storm had she sounded so quivery. Apparently, seeing someone cry was the thing that made her squirm. They would have laughed, were they not convinced that a loud sob would immediately follow it.

She did not speak again. Hurley focused on swallowing despite the painful scrape in their throat.

Then, out of the dark, the Raven blurted, "You know about the Burnham train robbery?"

Everything, including the tears, paused in place. "Umm..." Their weary mind struggled to decipher that. "You mean...the one you committed?"

"Yeah. The story about it. It's funny. I don't know. Will you stop crying if I tell you?" She wouldn't make eye-contact with them.

"Possibly?" They shifted to face her.

“Alright. Well, you should know that that particular train is made for long-distance travel. Meaning it’s for assholes wanting to get from the big cities to the coast, and who want to cross the desert without getting a grain of sand in their crusty asses. Refused to travel in anything that wasn’t coated in three layers of red velvet. Got suitcases stuffed full of money and those huge fancy hats with whole stuffed birds flopping on top of them.”

Hurley nodded. “I know the type.”

“I bet you do. Anyway, besides that, those trains don’t really make stops, on account of...well, on account of people like me, in fact. But they’ve got to slow when they get near towns, and I’m pretty damn quick. I just waited until I could run alongside it alright and then jumped off my horse and grabbed the ladder running up one side of the car. For all they brag about the security on those rides, wasn’t too much of a problem getting the window on one of the sleeper cars open, even while I was doing it upside down on from on top of the thing. That is except for the lady who kept screaming from inside while I was doing it.” 

They snorted. “That’s awful.”

She turned a little more animated as the plot rolled on. It may or may not have been the alcohol kicking in. “So of course, I’m going from car to car, and these people are practically throwing jewels and shit at me for me to take. I would’ve gotten smothered under a pile of ermine neck ruffs if I’d stood in one place long enough, that’s how loaded these people were. Didn’t even have to flash a knife or anything. They were already scared enough. That’s until I get to this one person. Some old-money asshole with a fucking cravat, and he’s got it pinned with some nice little ivory piece. He takes one look at me, and you wanna know what he does?” She paused. “Looks me dead in the eye and swallows the fucking thing.”

“No way!”

“Yeah, that’s right. Spouts some shit about how it’s a family heirloom and it was gonna take a lot more than a threat to get it out of him. So I looked him right back, and then I said, ‘Okay,’ and then I got him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him halfway out the window of this big old moving train. Loose skin flapping in the wind. Beautiful. Poor old guy was frightened out of his mind, just screaming his head off. And then I just held him there and waited.” She then took a long drink while staring straight ahead.

At last, they couldn’t bear it. “And? What happened?”

“Oh, I got it.”

“How?”

She gradually pulled her gaze away from the distance and to them. All the while, a sly, dry grin spread on her lips as she said nothing.

It took them a moment. “Oh, for the gods’ sake!” they tried to say between laughter. “Disgusting!”

“Yeah, well, you’ve heard the term ‘scared shitless,’ I’m sure.” This was the longest they had seen a smile persist on her by far. "Told you it was funny."

"You're lying," they said as they snickered. "There's no way that happened."

"No? It was in the papers. Just like I told it."

"Well, you can't trust the newspapers in a middle-of-nowhere little town like Burnham. They'll do anything to get a sensational story, even telling a tall tale."

"Damn right they will. By the time a story gets to them, it's already been told by a dishonest witness, to a friend with a flair for the dramatic, to a friend's friend who likes to shoot the shit with his bar buddies, to a friend's friend's mother who needs a story to share with her knitting circle. By that time, the Raven's a myth. That's what finally gets into the shitty papers." She glanced their way. "That's how I like it."

"People making up stories about you?"

"Sure. It gets them scared of me. Makes what I do easier."

"But it's not true."

"A story might as well be true if enough people believe it. If they're all going to act like it's the truth." 

“Most people don’t take so kindly to slander.”

“Well.” She did not elaborate.

They turned the meaning of her words over in their mind as they waited for the coyotes to stop, which they didn’t. Regardless, Hurley slept, finally. The Raven did not try to run or else slit their throat in the night, which they felt they could count as a resounding success of an evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	3. Chapter 3

After looking over all of their supplies, Hurley distinctly and quite reasonably thought to themself,  _ This is fine. _

So the dust storm had wrecked some of their food. (The perishable food, specifically, the small amount of vegetables and the much more respectable amount of dried meat that the posse had been eating for most of the trip. The canned things were left.) But the thing was, they reminded themself multiple times, what they had in the wagon was originally meant to be for five people. Five people's worth of water, five people's worth of food and sunburn cream. (All meant to last for a matter of no more than three or four days.) That was good. Fantastic, even. It was all plenty to sustain two people for even a week or more. (They calculated. The water, certainly, would last no more than a matter of days at the rate they were drinking it, probably a week or so if they started being more cautious. The water could do them both in.)

They steeled themself. Squared their shoulders in the privacy of the dim wagon. Nothing was about to do them in. Hurley would ensure that both of them would survive regardless of how long they had to spend out here. Scarce resources were better than none, and they had practice in stretching things until they didn't seem so scarce anymore. They had always been adaptable. They were proud of that.

If they had to burn the wheels of the cart for firewood, then that would just be what they had to do.

As they took stock of what remained of the ropes and the horse tack that was now useless to them, they almost didn't hear the approach of footsteps behind them. When Hurley stepped outside and into the brilliant light, they found the Raven standing in front of them. She seemed to have been waiting for them. 

After awhile of nothing, Hurley tried, "Hi."

She did not return in kind. She was staring at them. To their surprise, her eyes were not narrowed or malicious this time, or at least didn't seem that way. They weren't sure what kind of look she had on her face, exactly. She just seemed to study them. 

They were just about to give the art of conversation another go when she finally, abruptly, sighed and held out her hands. Earlier, Hurley had manacled them. "Undo these," she said. 

They felt their eyebrows raise before they could stop them. Slowly, they responded, "I'll have to chain your legs first."

"I know," she murmured. She was glancing away from them now, her head slightly down. They could not quite make out her expression. 

They shrugged. "Alright." 

As soon as the handcuffs were off, she turned around. They watched her pick up the scuff-ridden guitar that had belonged to Barbra. Hurley had pulled it out and placed it in a pile of miscellany as they were sorting out the wagon. She quietly took it a little ways away and sat with it on the ground. 

They looked away. It was only a hunch, but they got the sense that she wouldn't appreciate them watching for too long.

It wasn't long before the sound reached them. First just random, fluctuating tones as she tuned the instrument that, judging by how long it took, had not seen tuning in some time. After that came melody. Low, strummed rumbles and high, keening notes. It was mournful and lovely. The song moved along at a slow, pensive, steady pace like the clop of a tired old horse. They felt it rocking them. 

The Raven wasn't singing, but they recognized the tune of "Wayfaring Stranger." The words came to mind as a point of focus, and soon it seemed as though they truly were hearing them aloud all around them. _ I'm going home to see my mother; I'm going home no more to roam.  _ They kept at their work of looking through everything and trying to deem what might be useful. It went a little faster now, a little more smoothly. They weren't sure if they were getting better at it or if they had simply been struggling to concentrate before, in the desert's lifeless silence.

And then they came across the small collection of things that the posse had taken when she was caught. 

Briefly, they wondered if they should go through her things at all, even if, technically, they didn't really belong to her anymore. But they had to figure out somehow what of it was worth keeping, and letting her do it herself, allowing her to access her weapons and lock-picks and gods knew what else, seemed like a bad plan to say the least. They would just take a quick look themself.

There wasn't much to it regardless. The usual ropes and a couple steel plates and forks. There were, indeed, small implements that were likely for undoing locks. Knives, too, though they seemed more for skinning and carving and cutting than doing any real harm. They started looking at the smaller things. A tiny, rusted metal mirror. Feathers. A drawstring leather pouch with fringe at the bottom and a little silver button showing what looked like a half-moon. Small bandages. And then there was that so-seldom-fired gun.

They almost didn't bother with the stick. She had a smooth, barkless gray branch from an old dead tree, with a small protrusion on one side that made for a nice, natural hand-hold. It was, they supposed, a walking stick, for when she had to cross long swaths of the desert on foot. There were random, aimless swirls in the wood that seemed to have been carved out by insects long ago, and then much sharper and deeper cuts put there deliberately. A crude carving of an arrow running up the side, a geometric pattern of diamonds. None of the designs seemed to fit together, and seemed the result of boredom more than anything else.

Almost certainly, they would not have noticed it at all if not for the name. While they did not recognize it, there was a name on it, carved in blocky letters near the top of the thing, along with all the other etchings made into it. They looked at it for a long time. 

And they wondered.

They half-turned around and held the thing up. "Hey, Sloane, is this yours?"

Without hesitation--not for a moment--she stopped playing long enough to look at them and then grimace. "Yes, and stop going through my--" 

And then Sloane realized. It was all over her subtly reddening face.

Maybe it was bad of Hurley to feel so pleased with themself. They must have looked it too, because after she recovered from the initial shock, her eyes narrowed and rolled. That often happened when they smiled.

Suppressing a giggle, they took a few steps toward her, then stopped. They had a feeling that approaching her from behind is what had gotten them into trouble yesterday, startling her. They went around so that they could come up beside her and sit. "I'll still just call you the Raven, if you'd really rather."

Her jaw was set as she held her breath. Then, all at once, she let it out and slumped a little. "Whatever. That's my name and now you know it. Guess there's no reason for you not to call me that."

They nodded and sat a moment longer. "It's a pretty name."

This time, the change in her was almost imperceptible. Hurley just caught it out of the corner of their eye. A moment's pause, the way she straightened just slightly as though the words had taken her aback. They were learning to watch for these things.

Finally, when they glanced back at her, she was rubbing at a mark in the guitar, trying to determine if it was dust or a scratch. She was not looking at them. "Thanks," she murmured. Then, a little more boldly: "Picked it myself."

Hurley felt their grin grow. "Mine too."

"Huh. Well, yours is good too."

"I think so."

That, more or less, was the end of that. When, after a period of silence, she returned to playing, they schooled themself into not reacting. If they made a big deal of it, they feared, she would grow self-conscious and stop. Instead, they kept their gaze away from her and lay down on the ground. The earth was almost hot enough to burn the exposed skin on their back where their shirt rode up, but not quite. It just felt warm. They closed their eyes to the relentless blue above as they listened, and the whole world became the music and the dark red they saw behind their eyelids.

* * *

"Absolutely no way."

"Oh, yes."

"Nope. Nope. You can't possibly hit that thing."

"Bet you anything I can."

Sloane snickered. "I'll take that bet. That bird is at well over a hundred meters away, faster than shit, and you're going at it with a goddamn revolver instead of a proper hunting rifle. Not possible." 

"Shh, don't let it hear you." Their heart pounded against the ground like a closed fist as they lay flat on their belly, fixed on the roadrunner. Without thinking about it, they did what they always did, tilting the gun up an inch for every twenty meters. Just like hitting clay. They aimed for the question mark-shaped neck. Next to them, Sloane, meanwhile, had rolled onto her back with her hand flopped lazily over her stomach. Her neck was arched all the way back to look at the bird with a droll grin. She was looking at the thing upside-down. What did she know anyway?

"It's not gonna hear shit from this distance, which is, I'll remind you, very fucking far," she said. 

"It could! You don't know!"

"You manage to hit that thing, I'll eat my ha--"

They shot and the bird dropped with nary a squawk.

Hurley popped up from the ground. First they smiled at the still dark lump on the ground very fucking far in front of them, then, without changing their expression, turned to a gaping Sloane. When she glanced their way, they raised their eyebrows and swung their revolver by the trigger guard, back and forth, on one finger. Admittedly, they made a show of milking it. 

She snapped her mouth shut and narrowed her eyes. Then, without so much as a sigh, she removed her hat, walked over towards the unlit fire pit, held it for a moment over the skillet sitting nearby, and, with a certain solemnity, dropped it. 

They laughed. She didn't, but she smiled in this particular way they had come to recognize, where she wrinkled her nose, as though it were a grin repurposed from a failed sneer.

"I'll go grab the bird," they said.

She watched them the whole time they were walking back. When they got close enough, they could see the studying glint in her eye, her head cocked. 

"Hey," she said. A second later, she tossed an empty can into the air. They drew and picked it off, hearing the satisfying tang as the bullet connected. 

They took a moment to watch it fall to earth, diverted from its original course, before looking back at her. "Whoo!" They pumped their fists in the air, despite the fact that a carcass still swung from one. 

She chuckled. "Damn." Holding her hand out toward the bird, she said, "Give me that." When they handed it over, she started plucking the feathers. 

"You don't have to do that."

"It's fine. You ever had roadrunner before?"

"Nope. Have you?"

"Oh, a few times. It's alright."

"So you've shot them before!" They sat beside her cross-legged to watch her work. "Why were you giving me shit about it just now?"

"No, I've only trapped them. Just a few times, when I'm away from any towns for a good long while."

"Isn't that harder?"

"Yes, which is why you should be impressed." She glanced at them, then went on, "Also, I'm a terrible shot. Things look blurry to me when they're at that distance away, so there wasn't much point in learning." 

"Really?" As her words sank in, they felt their previous excitement congeal in them like a blood clot, stopping them up. They wondered if she might be lying, but they weren't good at spotting that kind of thing in anyone, least of all her. She had not tensed or looked away as she had spoken, at least that they had seen. She just kept pulling the feathers. Anyway, it would have made for an odd thing to lie about in this moment. 

The number 113 flashed through Hurley's head over and over. Abernathy had been shot from 113 meters away, the distance from the door of the bank to the general store's porch. Her bad sight and the clean gun and the fact that--they could tell--she hadn't thought to shoot when she had gotten caught. Her reaction to simply hitting Hurley in the nose. Would the law know all that? Would it care? It wasn't what one would call hard evidence, certainly nothing capable of proving her innocence, but it didn't add up. What did it mean to bring her back to a Goldcliff unaware of such things?

They didn't ask all that. Instead, they pushed past the stewing in their guts to ask, "Are you often out here for a long time?"

She shrugged. "Depends. Sometimes I have a harder time getting some sheriff off my trail, and I have to hide out here a little longer before I go back to a town. I can be here for a few weeks without much of a problem." She cocked her brow at them and jabbed, "When I'm prepared."

They flicked a spot of dried mud from their boot. "That sounds lonely," they said in the most neutral way they could, which was probably not very.

She snorted. "No. The quiet's nice out here."

Hurley looked around. "I think I agree. It's funny. I didn't like that about it when I first got out here, but being in a place that's sort of...stuck out of time, that's a nice distance to have."

"You can disappear, yeah." She passed the featherless carcass to them, and they began to slice its belly.

"I wouldn't want it all the time, though. Eventually I think I'd want someone around."

"I don't like answering to anybody."

"I'm aware of that," they said with a grin. 

"Well, do you? 'Cause you seem like you'd rather be the person people answer to."

"Do I?" They paused when their knife was partway through the thin, shining muscle under the skin as they held the bird over the dead charcoals. The blood rose up out of it and dribbled onto the ashes, so that it would be soaked up. "I don't think it has to be about answering to anyone. You can just be with people."

"Where'd you learn to shoot?"

"Well, when I was young, maybe seven or eight, my mother--"

"Oh, gods."

"Hey, do you want to know or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's just I should've known you'd make it something sentimental." She gave them a flippant wave while still looking down at the roadrunner. Hurley chose to be optimistic and assume that was her version of a joke. "Go on."

They huffed. “Well, I’ll make it quick for both our sakes, I guess. I was gonna say that my mother always told me I thought with my belly.”

“Huh. Rude.”

“No, she didn’t mean it like that. She meant I listen to my gut before anyone else, including her, or my own brain. Like how I’d go running out the door in my underwear to frighten off the foxes if I thought I heard them near the chickens. I was maybe three when I did this, I should mention.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“Anyway, finally Mom decided that if I was going to keep running into things without thinking about them, I might as well figure out how to protect myself while I did it. I started off with a slingshot when I was maybe seven, but I wanted a gun before long. She managed to put off giving me one until I was, oh, twelve or so.”

Sloane chuckled. “Very irresponsible. I love it.”

“Hey, at least she found someone to teach me before she let me lay my hands on the thing myself. I’ve been practicing ever since.”

“I can tell.”

“Yeah.” 

It was some time before either of them spoke again. Several times, Hurley took in a big breath to speak, held it and let it grow hot and tight inside their chest, and then let it all out. The sun had melted into a band of fading yellow on the horizon. 

Finally, they said, “Hey, let me switch out your shackles.”

They went to chain her ankles so that they could remove the irons around her wrist, but she rolled out of the way at the last second, flopping onto her back. “Nah, don’t feel like it,” she answered, playing up the lazy tone. 

Hurley snorted. “Don’t be an ass, come on.”

This time, she flipped over onto her belly, still skirting just out of reach. Her head was in her hands as she fixed them with a playful grin. “You gotta catch me first if you want to do that, Red. I thought you were good at that.”

They stared her down and made a point of being unsmiling. “Sloane, it’s got to happen eventually anyway.

The smile slid from her face fast. She cast her eyes down to the ground. When she finally let them approach, it was while she was turned away from them and looking out to the fading light. She had closed. 

Over the nearly two weeks that they had been on their own together, this was what Hurley had come to dread far more than the dark of the nights and the heat of the days. It was the feeling of collapse, of having to knock down something that they had built up themself. Because they could almost pretend, before they remembered the chains again. It seemed, sometimes, that she almost forgot them as well. 

They had been sleeping closer together lately. On a particularly cold night, Sloane had even conceded to being under the same blanket with them, so long as Hurley kept their hands curled up against their chest. But it wouldn’t be tonight, regardless of how much either of them shivered. 

* * *

Hurley had seen it coming for days, but even so, they felt a wave of sickness when they picked up the canteen and heard no more than two or three mouthfuls of water slosh around the metal interior. 

It shouldn't have startled them the way it did. After all, they had been rationing their own water for a reason. They had been taking it by the capful like medicine doses, getting just enough to moisten their tongue, as if they could trick their body into feeling quenched. It took maybe an hour to sweat out that amount. Still, they had kept trying to enact a miracle, drinking smaller and smaller portions so that the supply would never quite run out, so that it would be effectively infinite. Ridiculous as that was, it kept them from considering the alternative. Which is why the alternative hit them harder than expected, when it became reality.

The inside of their throat itched. They wondered how parched their mouth would have to get before they became unable to speak, and then they squeezed their eyes shut, as though they could squeeze the idea out of their mind. Instead, they focused on the fact--and it was a fact, if they decided so--that they would not die of thirst. They called to mind the math that they had been churning through their head for days. There was one other full canteen of this size left. If they kept activity levels low and drank as little as possible, it could last two and a half days. A full three, maybe, if they were really careful. Then they would have the rest of the alcohol, which might dehydrate more than it helped, and then nothing at all.

Or they could leave behind everything here in search of more. And that would mean everything. 

They left the supplies in the wagon and stuck their hand in their pocket so they could feel the teeth of the cuff key against the pad of their thumb. Outside, Sloane plucked out the notes to what sounded like some hymn they'd once known. When they walked up and sat silently a little ways from her, she only nodded once before going back to the music. Over the past few days, they had never told her to ration her own water. It had seemed unfair, when they were supposed to be the one looking out for her, and anyway, it had turned out to be unnecessary. They hadn't seen her take more than a sip at a time lately. That shouldn't have surprised them, given how often she stayed out here. What did catch their notice was the way that, when she drank, she would often glance over at them from under a furrowed brow, over and over. 

But right now, she kept quietly twanging out the melody. The guitar hummed and whined. They looked at the sky above and found it as bone-dry and flat at the ground below. It was so, so very blue. They shut their eyes to it and simply focused on the sounds. She was making beautiful things happen over there. They hadn't noticed how quickly their heart had been beating until it began to slow, then. They listened until they started to feel the vibrations of the strings buzz inside their mind.

_ That's that little gut talking.  _ Their mother poked their belly again, pressed her ear to it.

"I don't think you killed anyone," they said, and as they did, they realized, for the first time, that they really did believe it.

"Uh," Sloane said. "Thank you?"

They pressed on. "Am I right?"

"What?"

"Tell me whether I'm right. Did you kill anybody?"

They heard her make a derisive sound. "Why are you asking all of a sudden? It's just my word against everyone else's anyway. It won't make a--"

"I want to hear you say it." For the first time, they looked her in the eye. There had been a small, lackadaisical grin on her face, but it was erased when they stared at her. She seemed abashed, then confused, but crucially, she held eye contact when she finally spoke. 

"No, Hurley," she said quietly. "I didn't kill anyone."

"Yeah," they breathed. "That's what I thought." Things went quiet again. Hurley thought of Bane, of one-person juries. They thought of the way he looked when he said that a bounty hunter was not a judge. Then, regardless, they stood up and said, "Sloane, come here."

"Well, alright, then, Your Highness."

They rolled their eyes. They should have expected that nothing would be easy right up until the end. "Please?"

She waited a moment longer, one brow cocked. Then she set down her instrument and took a few slow steps over. As soon as she was close enough, Hurley bent down and unlocked the shackles around her ankles with hands that, they were proud to say, stayed steady the whole time. 

She took off before they could blink. Turned on her heel quickly enough to kick sand in their face. Like she had been waiting for it, which she had. In the seconds afterward, the air around them felt strange and unusually still, the way it did just after a deafening sound. They hadn't exactly expected a long goodbye, but they had thought that she wouldn't leave without a word--that she would at least take the time to get supplies. But that was it, then. Well, it wasn't as if she owed them anything.

They thought that the flapping wing of her black hair behind her was the last they 

would see of her. Then, almost as quickly as she had started running, she stopped. She looked behind her, and the positively gleeful smile on her face faltered. After a few seconds, she slowed and then halted all together, simply standing and staring Hurley's way. 

They looked right back at her. It seemed like she was waiting for something from them, though what, they couldn't say. After awhile, they simply gave a small shrug. "You're free to go.” They picked up the chains from the ground, hung them on their forearm, and started to walk away. 

"Hey, wait!" 

They did. Upon facing her again, they thought she looked less like a woman newly liberated, and more like someone who had just been informed that trains are sentient. She was poised to dart off again at any moment, but she didn't. Instead, she kept on blinking and blinking at Hurley, mouth open. "Why aren't...you're not going to come after me?"

"Nope." 

Over and over again, she looked down at her feet, as if to ensure that the manacles were really gone. "Did you..." she started shakily. "Did you do that on purpose?"

They chuckled in spite of the strange sinking feeling inside their chest. "You don't really still think I'm that dense, do you? I wouldn't have let that happen by accident."

By now, she had transitioned from confusion to outright shock. Her head whipped back and forth rapidly, from the horizon and the open space to Hurley again. Then, suddenly, she shook her head. "Nononononono." She wagged her finger and, for some bizarre reason, laughed without humor. "Come on, what are you trying to do?"

"Um." Briefly, they looked around at the hobbled wagon with its missing wheels, the dust-covered pile of second-hand cooking supplies, and the stretch of flat nothing for miles around. "Listen, I don't know what kind of nasty plan you think I have in mind, but I'm probably not equipped for it."

"Ha!"

"I don't think you're getting it. I'm letting you go, alright? Isn't that all you've been trying to do for the past week, is get away from me?"

"I could've done it myself," she blurted. 

"Okay--"

"I could've."

"Well, for the gods' sake, do you want to come over here so I can try to let you go again? I'll try to make it look like an accident this time if that makes you feel bett--"

"No! No, I'm just..." She let out a long breath and ran a hand down her tired face. "I'm just trying to...this doesn't make any fucking sense! Why now?"

They sighed. Their saliva was thick and tasted bitter. "I failed. I said I was going to bring us both back to Goldcliff in one piece, but I can't do that. Not with how we're running low on supplies. And I'm not going to risk your life trying to do it. You didn't sign up for that. It wouldn't be fair. So there. What? What do you want? This?" They held up the key to the cuffs. As they tossed it on the ground in front of her feet, out of their own reach, they said, "Take it! I don't need it anymore." She kept on standing there. Finally, they huffed and extended their arm in the direction of the Western sun behind her. "Go. I'm serious."

Sloane still didn't move. Her arms had fallen down to her sides, and she was no longer in a position to flee. She just continued looking on. When, finally, she spoke, it was in a far smaller voice than before. "Posters say 'Dead or Alive.'"

It took a moment for them to process the meaning of that, but when they did, it hit them right between the eyes. First they felt the surprise and then the sting of it. "You really think I'd kill you for the money?"

There was a moment of quiet--consideration, maybe?--before she answered, "Guess not."

"What, then? That I'd keep you here when there wasn't enough water for the both of us? That I would...that I'd stop letting you have what was left? Seriously, you believe I'd do that?"

By now her eyes were cast downward. She took a deep breath and turned her head away. "Dunno. I've only known you for couple weeks," she mumbled. 

They shouldn't have felt insulted. It was true, after all--their job had been to get the Raven, or rather her body, back to town one way or another. And even if they had never intended to harm her, there was no reason they should have expected a prisoner to think any better of her captor. But maybe they had expected it anyway. After sleeping side-by-side for many nights and talking through the days, they thought that they had opened enough of themself to her, that she would have been able to just look and see for herself who they were. "Well, I wouldn't," they said quietly. Their back was to her now. 

They had gone back to sorting through supplies, to see what they would need to go on living, when they heard the slow approach of footsteps from behind. She picked up the key from the ground before she kept stepping, almost gingerly, toward them. She stopped well before she was within their reach, but still, she was close enough now that they could get a good look at her eyes, which were wide and wondering. "You're serious, aren't you? I'm free?" A smile had begun to form on her lips as she spoke.

They weren't sure whether to laugh or moan in frustration. They did a little of both. "Yes, you seriously are."

She looked at her hands and laughed in a way that they hadn't heard her laugh yet, soft and high, almost a twitter. Already, the way she carried herself was different, her back straighter and her movements looser. It looked as if a weight, heavier than the weight of the irons alone, had been taken off her. They felt a little lighter too. 

A moment later, though, she snapped back to look at them, her smile sloughing. "What about you? I mean, what are you going to do if not stay out here?"

Hurley sucked in a breath and then grinned at her. "Start walking, I suppose, right? I don't think it's going to do me any good staying here anymore, so I might as well pack up what I can and find my way back to Goldcliff. Or, at least, find my way to the Grist first, so I could follow it..." They trailed off. They had, unsurprisingly, not thought this through. Their stomach felt like a ball of metal hanging down inside the cavity of their body, weighing them to the ground.

Sloane spoke up, then. She said, "We could," and then, under her breath, "shit." Hurley looked up to find her with her hands on her hips and the toe of her boot tapping rapidly, brow furrowed, staring down at a stone at her feet as though trying to break it in half with telekinesis. Her eyes were still hard when she met their gaze again. "Look, I can help you get back, but we're doing it my way, alright? I'm not gonna take the main routes and risk getting caught all over again. Take it or leave it."

They were stuck on the "I can help" bit of that. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm..." She huffed. "I don't feel good about leaving you on your own out here right after you just up and let me go. It doesn't seem right. I can help you out."

"You don't have to do that, though."

"No, I don't. But I know this part of the desert a lot better than you, so..."

"Are you saying we have a truce?"

Before that moment, she had appeared disinterested, almost flippant. Her arms were crossed, and her half-lidded eyes had shifted to look off into the distance. Now, she seemed to snap to attention, brows raised. "Yes," she said slowly, as if it were occurring to her while she spoke. "I guess you'd call it that."

A moment ago, they had kept themself from considering the possibility that they wouldn't get through, but a possibility is what it had been. Now even the air inside their lungs felt like less of a burden, like air indeed instead of something dense and heavy. Now the idea of not surviving seemed like no more than a bad dream. The very ground did not feel so hard against their feet.

And, besides that, they would not be alone. They would still have a voice to anchor them in the darkness, music around the fire. They would not go crazy at night, thinking that they were floating apart from the rest of the world in directionless darkness. Her presence would be proof positive that they had not been left alone completely. It was peculiar, their realizing that they had learned to like the nights. Hurley's lips curved upward until their cheeks hurt. They would, for certain, make it back now. The elation they felt at that made them reel.

They allowed the shackles to fall back to the ground as they went up to her and instinctively took her hand in theirs. Sloane did not pull away, in fact did not move a muscle. She never broke eye-contact, with all the wide-eyed vigilance of a jackrabbit before a fox. She was still cautious, but that was alright. It didn't change the fact of what had just happened. 

"Thank you," they said in a hush. "Thank you, Sloane."

Her gaze only drifted away from their face in order to stare at her hand grasped in theirs. It was another moment before she, still blatantly at a loss, mechanically shook it. Well alright then.

Quickly, she shook her head as if to snap out of a trance. It might have been their imagination, but she seemed, for an instant, to grin back. "This is a very weird day. Alright. Let's go, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	4. Chapter 4

Sloane liked to keep to the networks of slot canyons when they could. She said that, lucky for the both of them, they were safe to travel this time of year, since it wasn't the season for storms and flash floods. The way through them was twisting and took them out of their way at times, not to mention that they sometimes had to squirm sideways through thin bottlenecks. They sucked in their bellies so that they would not be cut open by the sides of the walls. But it was out of the way of roads and anyone who might spot them, which is what she was concerned with.

  
In the moment, Hurley hardly cared why they were there. Never in their life had they known such color. Red and orange and purple and yellow dripped down the sides of the canyon in every shade, ran in paintbrush streaks along the jagged points and curving contours of the edges. The stone was alive with it. It moved and changed as surely as the traveling sun, shifting in tones and brilliance as the light struck it differently throughout the day. They were awash with color. When they looked up, they found the vein of blue turquoise between the narrow stone walls. The sky was not so overwhelming now.

  
They forgot themself more than once. They would slow almost to a stop as they wondered at the color around them, or they would get too far ahead to look around the next corner until Sloane called out that they were going the wrong way. At a couple points, they wondered if they were slowing her down, but whenever they looked back, she had a grin on her face and her head cocked to the side in amusement. The longer they went on, in fact, the more easily she laughed. Hurley understood. They had to laugh at themself too. They couldn't stop tracing their finger along the smooth grooves in the walls. They felt like a silly child, and that felt okay.

  
Hurley picked up red pebbles, the clean bones of mice and lizards. At one point, they found the smooth skull of a ram and carried it in their hand by the horn. When she asked, they told her that they couldn't help but collect. Terminal sentimentality, their mother had called it. They had always needed attachment points for their memory, a solid foothold that they could feel for themself. And these were things they weren't eager to forget.

  
She just shrugged. "You wanna lug all that shit around the whole walk back, be my guest," she quipped. But they didn't miss the way that she kicked interesting rocks into their path for them to pick up, the couple of animal teeth she handed them.

* * *

"You know, you're always playing sad songs."

  
She stopped strumming in the middle of a line and gave Hurley a questioning look. She had been playing "Hard Times."

  
"I mean, there's nothing really wrong with it," Hurley continued. "It all sounds beautiful. I just noticed."

  
"Well, would you rather I played something else?"

  
"Only if there's some you know and like. Just for a change, maybe."

  
"Today is gonna be the d--"

  
"No, that's not really a happy one either."

  
Looking down at her strings, she considered for a bit longer. Then she seemed to nod to herself and started again, this time with a quick, bouncy melody. Without thinking about it, they began to nod their head to it immediately, but they didn't quite recognize it until she got to singing the lyrics. "Old Chisholm Trail." Her version came in a rich chest voice with just a tinge of roughness. She had just recently begun singing along when she played, and it always began as it was beginning right now, quietly. It was almost as if she were trying to make it seem incidental, being casual about it. As the night wore on, though, she'd get louder, put more character and variation into the lyrics. She'd start to smile more as she went on, too. Sometimes her ears would slowly shift in position, rising up to show her excitement. Every now and then, she'd seem to notice and quickly put them down again, only for them to prick back up gradually over time.

  
_"I wake in the mornin' afore daylight,_

_And afore I sleep the moon shines bright._

  
_Come-a ti yi yippee, yippee-ay, yippee-ay_

_Come-a ti yi yippee, yippee-ay."_

  
When she was finished, they piped, "I think I've heard that one before! I used to hear herders sing it. You weren't ever a cowpuncher by chance, were you?"

  
"Oh, tried to be, at one point," she said with a one-shouldered shrug.

  
"No way! Was it good? What happened?"

  
"Eh, it didn't last long. I was only fifteen when I started trying for that. I was making a lot of changes at the time. Left home, started transitioning. I thought running away to chase after longhorns would be a brilliant idea back then. It wasn't too bad, really. I didn't last, obviously, but I learned a lot. A lot about how to live out in the open, for one. And things that got me ready for what I do now."

  
"Stealing, you mean? How's that, _vaquera_?"

  
"Well, like riding and running. You learn how to navigate your way out of a panicking cowherd on the job. Not so easy to dodge slip between all those hooves and big bodies without getting pummeled, especially if you've lost your horse." She smirked. "And not so different from being surrounded by six bounty hunters and finding my way out of that shit. You know what those papers say about it. They all jumped on the Raven, but all they caught was each other's arms and legs. I slipped out and was gone in a flash. Like I just poofed right out of existence in front of them."

  
Hurley snorted. "Now you're just repeating those tall tales bored old folks say when they need an interesting story to pass around the bar."

  
"Well, it is an interesting story, isn't it?"

  
"Maybe, but I'd like to know what actually happened." They peered at her. "Who are you, really, Ms. Devil?"

  
Her glance was appraising. She looked down at them, eyebrows raised and grin sly. Then she chuckled and reached into her pocket for a coin. "A story for a story, Red," she said. "You tell one and I'll tell one. We'll flip for who goes first."

  
"Hold on a minute. You can do all those coin disappearing tricks! What if you rig it?"

  
"Oh my gods, you're ridiculous. I'm not going to rig it."

  
"Bet you will."

  
Ignoring them, she threw the penny into the air.

  
"Heads!" Hurley called.

  
She caught the coin in her palm and, without looking at it, smacked it down onto the back of her other hand. Strictly for the purpose of agonizing Hurley more, it seemed, she flicked her eyes over towards them, still beaming. Mischief all the way down.

  
"You absolutely rigged it."

  
She pulled her fingers away to look at the coin, and given the way she immediately bit down on her lip in a failed attempt to hold back a laugh, they had no need for her to tell them it was tails. "I fucking knew it! You did!" They gave her a playful shove, both knocking against each other, giggling in high pitches. They knew that they were acting like a child, and it was almost on purpose. If not now--when they were out here with almost no one else to see them--when? They hadn't felt enough like a child back when they actually were a child, they were realizing.

  
"I didn't!" she tried to say over her giggles. "I didn't, it was a 50/50 chance. You're a terrible loser!"

  
"Alright, alright. What story do you want to hear from me?"

  
"What brought you to Goldcliff?" Sloane asked. "You told me you're not from there originally, right?"

  
"No. I'm not from anywhere around the desert, actually. I used to live further east, in the plains. In Hylra. My family owned a big farm out there. We were planters, mostly, but we kept animals to, for ourself and to sell both."

  
"Aha," she said with a bit of a glint in her eye. "So we were always rivals, huh?"

  
"I guess you're right. A farmer and a cowhand. No wonder we didn't get along at first." It wasn't until they said that, really, that they realized how well they were getting along now. Very. They continued, "I loved it out there, though. I don't remember this, but my mom used to say as soon as I learned to run, I would go tearing off through the tall grasses. Only they were a lot taller than me at the time, so I would just sort of keep jumping up along the way trying to see where I was going. She'd just see my little head popping up."

  
She let out an ugly snort at that.

  
"'Course I had to stop that once Mom adopted my other siblings. There were five of us, plus her. I helped take care of the others. I just remember it was the middle of nowhere, kind of like here if here had all kinds of green, and we had nothing to do but sit around with each other at night.

  
Sloane nodded, then stopped. "So what happened to all that?"

  
"Well, Mom died, is what happened." She didn't move or even look terribly surprised, but they did notice that she stopped fiddling with the penny still in her hand. They could say that in a way that sounded level nowadays. For years, they hadn't been able. "I...well, I tried to keep it together. For a couple years I tried to run the place without her. But I was young. I didn't know shit about how it operated, really--helping with harvests and animal births will teach you a lot, but not how to run something that big. All my siblings left the place one by one. I think now I understand why. Maybe if I were less stubborn, I would have gone sooner, too, because it was damn hard even being there without her, especially when the place was failing."

  
They took a deep breath before they continued, "I had a lot of anger at the time, though. I was the last one there, and it ended up being for nothing. The landlords and middlemen took too much out of the place and eventually got sick of waiting for money. I guess I was like you for awhile, just wandering around and not knowing quite what to do. That's how I got into plenty of fights. It took me a fair amount of time to straighten out, if that's what I've done at all.”

  
The night insects droned as they often did. They made the air sizzle with sound. Hurley looked up at the clear sky, at the brightness of the black.

  
When they felt that it had been awhile, they slowly looked over at Sloane. Her wrists rested on her knees as she stared into the fire. The orange light set off sparks in her wide eyes and deepened the shadows around her downturned mouth.

  
It took her a moment for her to realize that they were looking at her, and when she did, she only glanced at them once before quickly looking away. Very eloquently, she said, “Huh.”

  
“So...that’s my story.”

  
“Yeah, I guess it is.” Another beat, or rather several, of silence. “I mean, I just like...we were having some laughs and then you just kind of spilled your whole soul to me.”

  
“What? So I ruined the fun, is what you’re saying?”

  
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I just don’t really have anything that can follow that up. Um...the thing that actually happened to me was that it was really two bounty hunters, not six, and they didn’t even get that close to me. Just embellished what happened when they told people that I’d gotten away from them.” She flicked a pebble lying on the ground. “Fake story’s more interesting, like I said.”

  
“Hmm…” They scooted a little closer to her. "How about this, then: why the Raven? You gave yourself that nickname, not the papers, right?"

  
"Oh, that's easy. It's because ravens are assholes, and I'm also an asshole."

  
"Well, lots of animals are assholes."

  
"Yes, but most of them don't mean to be. Ravens are assholes just for the fuck of it, and they know it."

  
"I don't follow."

  
“They’ll go after eagles, you know. Chase them. Sometimes it’s to get food from them or get them out of their territory, but you know what? Sometimes the ravens fuck with other animals for the fun of it and nothing else. They’ll dive onto the big birds’ backs and try to ride them through the sky like they’re mustangs.” She leaned back. They saw the expanse of her neck as she tilted her head toward the stars, like she were expecting the birds to materialize from the dark sky. “That’s what I like about them. They screw with things bigger than them just because they like it.”

  
“And that’s you? Do you steal because you like it? Or do you do it because they have to?”

  
“Why does it have to be ‘or?’” she retorted with a half-shrug. “It’s all I know how to do, and I enjoy it. That a problem for you, bounty hunter? That I’m not some starving waif stealing out of necessity and instead I enjoy sin and depravity as much as everyone says?”

  
Hurley just smiled and shook their head at her baiting tone. “Please don’t flatter yourself, Devil.”

  
“Hmm?”

  
“You’re not that bad.”

  
At that, she paused, just for a moment. Then, abruptly, she shook her head to clear the wisps of hair from her face. “Shows what you know. Anyway, I think I still owe you an actual story. You ever hear about Raven stealing the sun? Not me, another Raven. It’s an old legend.”

  
“I haven’t.” They turned their whole body to face her, crossing their legs and settling in. She did the same in return. “Let’s hear it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	5. Chapter 5

The stones rising from the ground gradually melted into soft dunes as they left the badlands. The sand sank and slipped under Hurley's feet, like mud without the wetness. In the heat, it made for slow going. But, either because she was taller or because she was used to the terrain, Sloane seemed to have an easier time. They found themself stepping inside the footprints that she made as they followed her trail, to save some of their energy. It helped, even though her stride was longer than theirs. It didn't take her long to look over her shoulder and notice, but she only grinned and kept going when she did.

  
At one point, she came to a stop, and Hurley looked to see a trail of curved lines, diagonal to one another, stretching up and over the gentle slope of one of the dunes. They looked like a child had drawn swishes into the sand with their finger, except that they were the same drawing repeated, on and on into the distance. These, along with their and Sloane's own prints, were the only interruptions on the surface of the still sand ocean with its great waves frozen in place.

  
"Sidewinder," she said, as an explanation and as a sound of appreciation. Hurley was learning the things that she went soft for.

  
They appreciated it, too. They looked at the snake's strange tracks stretching away from them and thought they looked like the stitches in a quilt. They imagined that they were looking at the very seam that held the earth together.

* * *

Hurley didn’t know that they were approaching the river until they heard its grumbling from a distance, a low and endless roll of thunder. The Grist shone like a blade dug into the stony yellow earth, and the sloping banks it had carved out held more vegetation than they had seen in the few weeks since they had been in the desert. Here, where it was still fairly open, the surface looked calm. The rapids that they knew well wouldn’t show up until they got into the canyons as they kept following the river’s path.

  
This was a good thing. They told themself that as they drank the first water in days that hadn’t come from underground or from the trunk of a cactus. This was a sight they had been waiting to behold. Anxious for.

  
“One more day, huh?”

  
Hurley nearly jumped, that night, when they heard Sloane speak up next to them. To be fair, the two of them hadn’t spoken much all day. She was looking at them, all of a sudden, having stopped her guitar playing. Hurley felt the scratch in their throat as they spoke, this time the result of disuse rather than thirst. “You think we’ll get back tomorrow?”

  
“Sure. Definitely by evening. Town’s not far away.”

  
They knew that already. In truth, they were surprised that Sloane was still here. Like a person watching for lightning bolts coming out of the blue sky, they had walked all day waiting. At some point, they were sure, Sloane would tell them that it was time for the both of them to part. They didn’t need her guidance anymore. Anyone could’ve followed the river back to Goldcliff, which sat on a cliff jutting directly above its foam.

  
But she hadn’t said that. Not yet.

  
The guitar was still in her lap, but what she was doing could hardly be described as playing. She strummed chords seemingly at random, with long pauses between each, without forming a melody. Each note was an unanswered call sent out into the dark, out of communication with all of the others. "Hurley, can I ask you something?"

  
"Yeah, sure."

  
"It's about that guy, the one who led the posse you were a part of. The sheriff of Goldcliff, right?"

  
"Bane?" They sucked in their belly a little as they felt their stomach lurch. It did every time they pictured his face. "What about him?"

  
"More about you, I guess, actually. I was just wondering, like...what are you going to do? After you get back, I mean. Are you going to keep doing like Bane did? Keep hunting?"

  
"I think I just might. I mean, maybe that sounds crazy, given how great it worked out this time, right?" They chuckled at themself. "And don't worry, I won't be trying to go after you again anytime soon. But, I mean, those would sure be some nice shoes to fill. Bane was one of the best. Not just in the sense of how many people he brought in, but in how he went about it, his whole philosophy. Innocent until proven guilty. He really believed that. He never wanted to play executioner. Always tried to bring people back alive and then let the law decide fairly."

  
"Mmm."

  
They looked at her, at her hunched-up shoulders. She had the instrument pressed up against her chest, her arms around it and her knees up in front of the soundhole, like she was guarding it. "What's wrong?"

  
"Nothing." She picked at the strings.

  
"No, come on, what?"

  
She turned her head away, as if she thought she could make them disappear if she pretended they didn't exist for long enough. It was at that time that they decided to dig their heels in, and would have said it was against their better judgment, if they had better judgment. When she finally glanced back, they were still staring at her, prompting a long groan. That seemed like a sign of imminent victory.

  
She kept looking on, at nothing in particular. Then, quiet, emotionless: "He would've liked to see me dead."

  
"What? No way!" They jumped up, to his defense. They put themself right in her line of sight. "Look, I know the posse was rough with you, and I'm sorry about that, but you have to believe me when I say he wasn't like that. He was taking you back for a fair trial!"

  
She made a noise of contempt in the back of her throat, almost snarled. "Fuck's sake, I knew you wouldn't get it," she grumbled.

  
"What? What don't I get?" This was decidedly what one might call poking the bear. But they weren't about to stop. There was a familiar heat in their cheeks and words speeding out of their mouth. "Tell me so I can understand."

  
"Look, never mind. Sorry I asked."

  
They waited for something else, and when they didn't get it, continued, "I refuse to believe he wanted you dead."

  
"Gods, why do you always have to have the last fucking word?!" She tossed her guitar to the side, and it made a hollow sound. They were surprised it didn't break. "You've been a bounty hunter for how long? Signed up a month ago maybe? Not nearly as long as I've been hunted. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."

  
"There's a lot you don't know. You haven't seen it from the side of the law."

  
"And you've never seen it from mine!" They almost jumped back when she spun on them. She was shouting, all of a sudden. "You didn't look him in the eyes when he grabbed me by the face to look me over. Let me tell you, I wasn't innocent in his mind. I was dirt. $1000 of fuckin' dirt. Not that I give a shit, no particular hard feelings for him, because what the hell else should I expect? They're all fucking like that!"

  
They shook their head slowly. "Well, do you think I'm like that?"

  
"_Yes_, Hurley, I do!"

  
Oh.

  
Once again, they took a full-blown hit from her. This one came up on them from behind and dazed them, made them falter and stumble. Nausea shuddered right through the core of them and nearly knocked them down.

  
They weren't sure what kind of look they had on their face, but it must have been pretty damn pathetic. She glared at them for only a second longer before the hardness in her expression fell away like water running off a smooth stone. They found it ironic, and depressing, that they were just now getting good at telling what she was thinking. She had the same look on her face now that she had had when Hurley had found out her name--surprise, maybe even embarrassment at some formerly unspoken truth finally being brought into the open.

  
They watched her swallow and glance away. She went over to the guitar, dusted it off, and started fiddling with the tuning pegs--uselessly, since she did not strum any of the strings to check the sound, just turned them this way and that. She seemed to coil into herself. Hurley felt like following her lead. Crucially, she did not apologize. They would have liked to think it was out of stubbornness or shyness on her part, but even they knew. It was something she hadn't meant to say, but that didn't make it untrue. Again, they had believed, had hoped, that she thought just a little better of them.

  
Well, fuck her. They had done all they could for her, up to and including freeing her for her own safety, hadn't they? If after all this she still wanted to lump them in with the rest--even if, granted, they had been the one to catch her in the first place and had fully intended to put her in jail not a month ago--

  
This bothered them a lot more than it should have.

  
Finally, they heard her sigh. When they looked back at her, she had her head turned toward the sky, toward the bright fingernail tip of a moon, but her eyes were closed. "Look, you seem okay." Sloane paused, then began again. "Actually, I think you're decent. You don't seem to be faking it, anyway, and I don't know why you would fake it at this point, much as I've tried to think of reasons. So, yeah, sure, in that regard you're not like them, fine. But you're helping them, aren't you? At the end of the day, you're gonna keep helping all the people who think that way and who'd like to see me in a world of hurt, right?" The shrug she gave was heavy and helpless, consignation to the truth. The fury had fled her. It was just sad. "So you asked a stupid question. As long as that's true, then yeah, you might as well be just like them. It wouldn't make a difference."

  
Before they had even managed to process all that, she spoke again. "You thought so too, didn't you? That I was a murderer, I mean. At the beginning. You did, right?"

  
They did not and could not speak.

  
"Yeah." The word was almost inaudible, withered as it left her mouth. Defeated.

  
"I didn't know you felt that way." It was as good as saying they didn't know what to say.

  
"Well, I've been at this awhile. They don't ever assume you're innocent. They wouldn't treat me the way they do if they did. So yes, Bane expected me to hang after that trial, a trial with a jury and a judge who, yes, would've walked in thinking I was guilty. 'Cause everyone already knows I'm guilty, or thinks they know."

  
"I don't," they answered at once, then quickly shook their head. If ever there were a time for choosing their words... "I was wrong to assume that about you when we first met. You're not a killer. I know that now. I mean I really do believe it. And...and I still can't accept that Bane was out to have you killed. I'm sorry, but I knew him, and I just can't. But I also believe you when you say you were hurt by people like me. And I'm sorry for that."

  
That was the instant that she looked back at them, quickly. There was surprise of a different sort on her face now. It opened her all the way up.

  
She caught herself a moment later and turned back to the guitar and shrugged so that their words would roll off her shoulders. "Well. I don't know if 'hurt' is the word. I'm just not keen on those fuckers inconveniencing me. I got places to be. I can't spend all my time holed up in a wagon. Or dead."

  
"Hey, Sloane?" They waited for her to glance their way again before they gently knocked their shoulder against hers. "I think you're decent, too."

  
Her grin just now had been wry. When they said that, though, and she looked their way, they thought they saw it change, and grow.

* * *

Both of them reached town by the following night, after seeing the steady approach of the buildings in front of them for hours.

  
Hurley had told her that they had some supplies they could give her before they left, if she wanted them. It sort of shocked them when she agreed to wait, albeit she insisted on doing so right inside their little house while they gathered the stuff, presumably so she could ensure that they wouldn’t call on anybody to come and catch her. They couldn’t expect a complete lack of doubt, after all.

  
When they had everything, they came out to find Sloane with her hands tucked beneath her arms, shifting on her feet. "Hi. Are you feeling okay?"

  
"Good as I can be, I'd say. This is sort of a den of vipers I'm in here." She grinned at her laconic way, but her gaze kept flicking to the windows like a trapped insect flying into the glass. Even in the poor light, they shone, alert. She was ready to bolt into the night and evaporate into the blackness outside, if needed.

  
"You're gonna be alright. I wouldn't have led you here if I thought anyone else would be around."

  
"Yeah. I mean, it's fine, it's not like I'm..." Sloane trailed off as she looked into the pouch that Hurley had passed her. "Holy shit, how much did you give me?"

  
"Kind of a lot. I hope you can carry it all."

  
She pulled out the lantern by its heavy metal ring to look at it, wide-eyed. "I can't take all this. It's yours, isn't it?"

  
Hurley shrugged. "I got my house here. And the general store and even my neighbors. I can get whatever I need. You're gonna be out in the middle of nowhere for gods-know-how-long. I want you to be ready."

  
With a scoff, she said, "I've been alright out there with far less, believe me." She looked down, in thought. Suddenly she appeared still, really still, rather than simply poised to flee. Then she turned to Hurley, and there was that soft glance again. She looked bared. "But...but thank you. And hey, something to remember you by, yeah?"

  
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" they asked with a smirk.

  
"Well, truth be told, I'm not sure I could make myself forget any of this if I wanted to."

  
"I don't think I want to. I'll..." They rubbed their neck. It wouldn't do either of them any good to say they would miss her. Thrusting their regrets out into the open would change nothing. "I just hope you're going to be alright out there."

  
"Desert's where I've always done best," she said with a small shrug. "I'd rather be out there than in a town that wants me dead."

  
"Right. You sure I can't...put you up somehow? I could hide you at my place for a couple days. Just to recover, after the time we've had."

  
"Nah, much too risky." Her chest heaved with a breath, and then suddenly her grin returned. "But hey, that truce of ours can only last so long, huh? Might run into you again one of these days when you're trying to catch me."

  
"Oh, so you're scared of me now?"

  
"Given that you're almost the only one who's managed to lasso me so far? Yeah, I think I have a right to be."

  
Hurley chuckled, then bit their lip. "I mean, I hope at this point you know I wouldn't do that to you again. I...the truce doesn't have an expiration date, you know?"

  
"Well, we'll see."

  
For another moment, they stared at her solemn profile. Soft streaks of bright moonlight touched the smooth curves of her cheekbones and prominent nose. It softened her edges, made them vague. It seemed that at any moment her form could fade from view altogether, become just as intangible as the light. All of her was precious, something Hurley hardly ever had a hope of seeing again in their lifetime. The thought made them weak in the way that hunger made them weak, a scraping at the lining of their belly from the inside.

  
Before they could dwell on the feeling, she took one step forward. Hurley waited. They felt like they might frighten her off if they made a move. Sure enough, when she didn't see them move, she raised her hand in the air, then brought it down gently onto their shoulder.

  
Nothing happened.

  
After several moments of silence, they finally cocked an eyebrow at her. She said, "Um." They felt increasingly hot despite the falling evening temperature as she gave them a couple little pats on the shoulder. "Take care of yourself, alright?"

  
They laughed lightly. "Oh, Sloane..." They paused, then put their hand over Sloane's and squeezed lightly. "I wish nothing but the best for you, you know that?"

  
"Yeah, alright." Her mouth was pressed into her shoulder. "So...bye, then?"

  
"Yes."

  
Both of them stood there.

  
After a beat, Sloane seemed to remember something suddenly and pulled her hand away. "Right, uh, I'll just--"

  
It didn't happen grandly. There was just the unassuming sound of pebbles in the street skittering under the leather of a shoe, hardly louder than a whisper. It would have been wholly unremarkable were it not the only sound aside from that of their own voices. They whipped around and took a moment to comprehend the situation now in front of them, materialized out of the darkened alleyway. There was a slight figure, and his gun was pointed Hurley's way, and they were almost startled for their own sake before they realized that he was aiming high.

  
Lil' Jerry looked at Sloane like a kid would look at some fantastic zoo animal.

  
"Geez," he said slowly. His nasal voice was full of the same wonder that they saw in his eyes. "I heard you were pretty bold, Raven, but coming back here is so stupid I've gotta be impressed."

  
Sloane's hands scraped against the wooden wall at her back. It seemed that she intended to claw into it, searching for a way to secure herself to the hard facade. The muscles in her jaw moved and bulged. She said nothing. There was that same look in her eye from a few weeks and a world ago, when she was a different person to them and they were a different person to themself. She looked as she had when they had first caught her, in the raw moment when she was open as a new wound before hardening. She was made of fear as, they now knew, she had been then.

  
Jerry flicked his head toward Hurley, then, as though they had just popped into existence in front of him. "You're alive?"

  
That was a good question. Was this really happening? Judging by the way their hot heart was trying to drill its way straight out of their ribcage, it seemed so.

  
He shook his head. He had already turned away from them. There was a curl to his lip. "Guess Bane was right when he wanted to go back and find you. Not that he could hardly even breathe for days after that storm got to him. Oh well. Can't believe you managed to drag her back here." He took a few steps forward. "Oh, don't worry, I'll let 'em know you were the one that managed it. Just as long as I get to do this." He was right up against her now, and it was with a relaxed slowness that he pressed the barrel of his revolver up into the soft flesh just behind her chin, underneath the tongue. Her head tilted up until her neck was fully exposed and she looked down at him like a frantic mustang, flaring nostrils, white-eyed. She looked all around for an exit route but kept bringing her gaze back to the gun. They could feel the ice of the metal on their own skin like a phantom pain.

  
He pulled cuffs out from the back of his belt and the jangle of them was like frantic bells and this wasn't how it was supposed to go. The two of them hadn't traveled this far for it to end like this, and it would not, could not.

  
"S..." They started speaking before they knew what they were saying. Rattle of metal in their ears. "Stop it. Stop it!"

  
Then there was a single great bang and, next to Jerry's feet, a hole in the floor with a starburst of black around its edges. Sulphur-scented smoke got in their eyes.

  
She was staring at them. They tried not to look back. They focused on their line of sight as they stared down the barrel of their pistol at the man in front of them.

  
"Hi, Jerry," they said politely. "Yes, I'm alive alright. Do me a favor and drop that weapon, okay?"

  
He blinked. He blinked again. They couldn't really blame him. "What're you--"

  
"It's gonna be fine. Just back away from her."

  
"Why..." He looked between them and Sloane. They saw him thinking about turning the gun on them.

  
"Jerry," they said with a sigh, "don't. You know I'm quicker."

  
He did know. He shook his head fast to try and dislodge the knowledge. "You wouldn't--"

  
"I wouldn't?" They took one measured stride forward. Of course they wouldn't. It was all bluff. But all they needed was for him to believe it.

  
He didn't seem to, entirely. But there was more of fear than suspicion in him, more of an instinct to quit while he was ahead. That was one of the few things they'd always liked about him. It took him only half a second more to drop the gun and raise his hands.

  
"Thank you." They turned to her then. "Sloane, come here."

  
She took another slack-jawed moment to react, looked at him once, and then went over to Hurley. They pressed the grip of the gun into her hand. Her fingers were loose, and she nearly dropped it before pointing it at Jerry. Her form was terrible. They bound his wrists as she held the revolver on him.

  
They thought about dropping him inside their house, then thought better of it. They had to be sure someone would find him in the morning--they wouldn't have left him tied for days. So they dragged him the extra feet to the sheriff's office, where, amidst his cursing, they threatened some and apologized more and ultimately left him locked in a utility closet. Then they walked away so fast they might as well have been jogging, blew right past a waiting Sloane outside, and pressed their forehead against an outside wall in an attempt to cool it, wondering exactly what it was that they had just done.

  
"Hurley." Sloane's whisper was loud, full of urgency. "What was that? Why did you do that?"

  
"I don't know," they said from inside their hands. This was the aftermath of a dynamite blast. It had happened in a moment, and now there was no way to retrieve the fragments that had been scattered to the winds. No fixing this.

  
"You don't know?!" Sloane let out an incredulous huff. "Hurley, do you have any idea what you just did? To your whole life? Come sun-up, it's open season on you. Fuck, they even know what you look like." The longer she went on, the more she sounded almost angry. She kept making sweeping gestures with her hand at nothing in particular, at everything, at where "they" lurked. "Gods almighty, Hurley, they're gonna hunt you! They'll come after you with--with dogs--"

  
"I'm aware, Sloane!" they snapped back. "I've been 'them,' in case you forgot. I'm not an idiot."

  
"Well, shit, then what were you thinking?!"

  
"I..." They stopped. They hadn't thought, really. It had been like pulling their hand from a hot fire. There was no time to think about why they did it. They just knew they had to. It felt like self-preservation even though it hadn't been themself they were protecting back there. "I guess I just got to liking you when you weren't in chains, and I didn't like the idea of you being back in them."

  
She visibly jolted, took a step back. “So that was really just for me?"

  
They said nothing, then shrugged. "I just did what I thought was right."

  
They saw the corner of her mouth lift by degrees. It was far more than her usual, tight-lipped, mischievous grin. She was open-mouthed and open. They had indeed done what they felt was right.

  
It lasted only a moment. She cleared her throat and said, "We've got to get you out of here."

  
"'We?'"

  
She had half-turned around, but paused to look back. "Well...if you're willing to come." More assertively, she went on, "Just so you could lie low for awhile, until the fuss around here dies down, and then, I don't know, figure out what to do as you go, I guess. Seems like kind of your M.O. Anyway, I got a bit of experience running from authorities, as you might recall, and my assumption is you could use some help with--"

  
"Sloane?"

  
"Yeah?"

  
They snorted, blinked away the hot prick in their eyes. "Of course. If you'll have me, of course." They went up to her, then stopped short. "Can I hug you?"

  
"Oh...fine, but fast. I want to move."

  
They did, and her arms stiffened as she wrapped theirs around her. But only a little.

  
She slid out of their grip before long. "I'm going to get ready to leave,” she muttered. “You get what you need. I’ll be back soon.”

  
"Sloane?" Hurley went to grab her hand as she turned away, but pulled back at the last minute, only brushing the thin fingers. "Be careful, alright?"

  
There was a snort in response. "You got a lot of fuckin' nerve telling me that, after that stunt of yours." But she could be seen smiling through the night.

  
What she had commanded them to do was easier said than done. They had a lifetime and then some of trinkets and heirlooms that they had brought back from their first home. None of them had value, because back then, anything worth anything had had to be sold. Only the priceless things had been left untouched. These were what they had carried with them where they went despite their weight.

  
They didn’t know how to prioritise. Everything was of equal worth to them. When they imagined leaving something behind, choosing their sister’s old doll over the tin-type of their mother, they imagined erasing the memory attached to the abandoned item. They couldn’t possibly prioritise their memories.

  
But Sloane would tell them that they couldn’t take all of it regardless. Sloane traveled light.

  
They came outside, bag full and eyes wet, to see her creeping their way with an already saddled horse.

  
"Did you steal that?"

  
"No, I wished upon a star."

  
"She's so pretty!" Hurley let the horse smell their hand and rubbed under her chin. "What's her name?"

  
"I tend not to name them. Sometimes I have to leave them behind with no notice. I don’t like getting attached.”

  
“Oh.”

  
“Anyway, you ready? Or do you need to do anything else.”

  
“I…” They gripped the strap of their bag until their knuckles hurt. “No. No, we have to leave.”

  
They were hardly on the horse’s back before Sloane started off. They went and went.

  
It astounded them when their head began to nod forward, at least as much as a person half-asleep was capable of being astounded. Being bounced in the saddle by the horse's trotting underneath them, with the thoughts of what they had just done nipping at their heels, they would have thought that the adrenaline would make them immune to exhaustion. But after maybe an hour of riding, the town that had been receding from them all this time had fallen off the edge of the earth, disappearing from the precipice of the horizon, so that they could believe it had never existed at all. They felt the swirl of thoughts in their mind finally condense and settle into something thick and heavy at the base of their skull, weighing them down. The dull thudding of hooves in the sand had the effect of waves washing up repeatedly, endlessly.

  
They must have begun to slump noticeably, because the horse's hoofbeats slowed and quieted. "You tired?" Sloane asked.

  
They barely bothered opening their mouth to slur, "A little." They were leaning back in their seat. Idly, they realized that they were warm, and that that, more than likely, was why they were able to sleep.

  
The horse stopped. Behind them, Sloane shifted and moved away a little as she shuffled around, and suddenly their makeshift backrest was gone. They caught themself before they could fall all the way backward. "I kept telling you not to keep watch the whole night and let me have a turn," she muttered as she reached for a rope at her side. "No wonder you're exhausted now."

  
They watched her hands slip under their arms and loop the rope around their waist. "What are you doing?"

  
"That's so you don't fall off." She passed the cord behind her back and knotted it in front of their belly, binding them quite literally at the hip. "You ever slept on the go before?"

  
"No, not really."

  
"Well, try it. I'm gonna keep riding through the night. You can just rest."

  
"What about you?" they asked around a yawn. "You're gonna get tired."

  
"I'll be alright. I've slept fine the past couple nights. Anyway, I've got to stay up. I'm the one who actually knows where to go." Out here, without fire, there was no light. They could not see the face of the woman inches from them as she craned her neck towards the squat mountains to the east, with a silhouette blacker against the black sky. As their eyelids drooped, everything blurred. They became unaware of where she ended and the sky began.

  
Then she turned toward them and got huffy. "Sleep, dammit."

  
"Okay," they mumbled, and fell back again but did not hit anything hard.

  
Hurley could not be sure how long the pause was before they felt her exhale into their thick hair. She gave a soft, short "Hyup" to the horse, and the rhythm began again, as fast and steady as before. They faded quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	6. Chapter 6

The next thing they knew, the air was soft and blue as a child's blanket.

  
Even after a few slow blinks to clear the sleep from their eyes, the world looked nebulous, still shapeable. The day had been only half-formed, and the light of the sun had not yet come to solidify it. By degrees, they got their bearings. They were not moving anymore. The rocking movements of the horse beneath them had ceased, and now they found themself lying still on the slightly scratchy fabric of a quilt. Their quilt, which they had intended to give Sloane before everything that had happened last night.

  
Oh, yes. _Everything_ had happened last night.

  
That thought, along with the sound of shuffling and the burble of water, prompted them to sit up. The Appaloosa appeared in their field of vision, free of a bridle and any other tack aside from the hobbles placed around her feet. She swept along the ground with her head hung low as she picked at the tough shrubs nearby, more greenery than they had seen out in most of the desert. They were by the riverbank.

  
They rose slowly, stroking the horse's neck as they passed, and continued down the small slope of the bank. They found her there by the water. Her jacket was off and sloppily folded by her side as she bent, sleeves rolled up and feet beneath the surface, washing the dust from her arms and legs. She leaned over to splash water in her face and blew out the drops that had run up her nose, straightened and shook her head like a dog to cast off the water that had soaked the tips of her hair.

  
Hurley did nothing. It wasn't long before one of her ears swiveled back, and then she turned to look behind her. The grin she gave them was dry. The dry ones came most easily, it seemed. "Well, good morning."

  
"Morning," Hurley replied as they stepped over to her. "You really went the whole night?"

  
"Yup. We should keep on going after this, too, once the horse is rested up a bit." She slowly leaned back and lay on the ground with a yawn. "Put even more distance between us and those assholes in Goldcliff."

  
They looked back at the prints faintly visible in the dust, which could be traced back along the bank. "Are we following the river?"

  
"Nah, we're here for a stop before we head to the canyons near Chulk. East of here." She nodded in that direction, towards where the blue-gray sky was a bit brighter. "I'd say we got maybe two hours before those fucks wake up and start trying to follow our trail. Said fucks are expecting us to follow the obvious source of water all the way, but we haven't been and we won't be. I took us the long way through the Flats before I brought us back around to here. Harder to track us through all that rocky land."

  
"Mm." They rolled those ideas around in their mind like a smooth stone between their fingers. Our trail. Track us. They were included in that, now. They were one of the people meant to lose, one of those with every chance against them. Meant to run and to run until they couldn't anymore. They thought of old sayings: that one must be lucky to avoid the wolf each time they entered the woods, but the wolf only had to be lucky enough to catch them once.

  
They found themself bouncing their knee. So sue them--they were a little excited. Who didn't love that kind of challenge? And open space stretched out before them. To run and to run.

  
It might be nice, for awhile anyway.

  
With a bashful sort of pride, they tried, and likely failed, to hide their smile by looking at the ground. "Can you believe I did that?"

  
"Of course I can't. You were out of your fucking mind." She snorted. "Gods, his face when you pulled that gun on him, I thought he was gonna piss all over the floor."

  
"Me too!" They giggled, and were too late to stifle it.

  
"He was talking such a big game, and then all of a sudden he didn't have you to back him up and he looked like a kicked puppy."

  
"Poor lil' Jerry. He wasn't even that bad, just grumpy."

  
"Eh. Fuck 'im." She glanced their way. "Seriously, that, ah, that was pretty damn cool back there."

  
"It was!"

  
"Yeah. Um, I can see how you're a force to be reckoned with in all those rough taverns, huh?" She paused. They waited. They had a feeling they knew where this was going, or at least was trying to go, like a moth continually bashing its face against a glass lamp trying to get to the flame. "Anyway, considering I'd be kind of screwed if that hadn't all gone down the way it did last night, well, you know. It'll just be nice having you out here for a bit--"

  
"Are you trying to thank me, Sloane?"

  
She had been quite methodically peeling off her cuticles as she spoke. When they asked the question, she did not turn their way, but her ears snapped back for just a moment. They thought they caught a touch of red in her cheeks. "Sure," she said slowly and smoothly. "Thanks."

  
"You're welcome," they answered with a grin. "Though really it was just in exchange for you leading me back to civilization."

  
"Well, that was payback for you letting me go, so maybe we're just past keeping score, huh?"

  
"Fine by me." They released a breath up into the lightening sky. The air that they took in smelled cool and clean. They had gotten used to it. "I'm not as scared as I think I should be. Is that bad? Should I be?"

  
She swallowed. Momentarily, her eyes flicked away. That could have meant something, or it could have been that she had felt like swallowing and flicking away her eyes. Either way, she then proceeded to flash her sly grin. "Why, you looking forward to being chased down?"

  
"Kinda."

  
She gave a deep belly laugh. "Yeah, you would, wouldn't you?"

  
"Is that crazy?"

  
"Everything about you is crazy." She wove her fingers together to stretch her arms above her, then leaned back slowly until she was lying on the ground with her head resting on her hands. “Anyway, I don’t think you have to be that worried.”

  
“Really? Why not?”

  
“Because, little Red, I’m damn good at what I do.” Her hat had fallen back into the sand and left her eyes unshaded, so that they could see the cocky glint in them. “No one knows how to make it out here better than I do. You’re very lucky.”

  
“Oh, is that right?”

  
“Sure. No one’s about to fuck with hgkk!” She got cut off by the horse, which, having returned from the water’s edge with its snout soaked and its mouth full, came up and proceeded to dribble all over her face. Hurley didn’t even try to keep from cackling while she scrambled to sit up and shoved the animal’s face to the side.

  
“Oh my gods,” they breathed, getting up to pet the mare’s nose. “Oh, Sloane, I love this horse.”

  
“That makes one of us,” she grumbled, face still dripping.

  
“Well, now we have to name her. What should we call her?”

  
“Not keen on calling her anything but an asshole at the moment.” She meandered over to them to look for a dry cloth.

  
“No, we should give her a nice name. Like Carson.”

  
“Dickbag.”

  
“Frida.”

  
“Jerk-Off.”

  
“Sapph--” And then they were forced to sputter and spit at the icy splash that hit their face. They swiped their palm across their face to clear the droplets from their eyes before looking to the side.

  
Sloane, with her arm wet and red-handed, gave them a look of glee an instant before she scrambled to her feet and ran. Which was wise, as a second later Hurley sprang up to chase her up and down the banks.

* * *

They woke one morning to soft sounds in the gray morning air. They were familiar to Hurley as anything, the sounds of a horse getting tacked up--the jingle of buckles and the gentle shff of leather against leather as the saddle is tightened. They knew it all without even having to open their eyes. But they realized, first, that it was somehow strange to be hearing that at this time of day. They were used to rising to silence. That, they next realized several more moments later, was because after a month of traveling with her, they had gotten used to rising before Sloane, who scarcely stirred until she smelled their coffee most days.

  
They turned to see Sloane saddling their animal, but she didn't look their way until they raised their head a little from where it rested on a folded coat. When she did, she seemed surprised to see them awake. "Oh, hey," she said in a whisper, though there was no one around to disturb with noise. Everything in nature was simply meant to be muted at this moment. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep."

  
"No, I'm up." They slowly sat up and rubbed the sleep from their eyes. "Where are you going?"

  
"Into town," she answered as she slipped the bridle over their mare's head. There was a settlement visible in the distance, from the place among a stand of large rocks where they had rested for the night. "It won't take me long."

  
They noticed the holstered gun at her hip--their gun. That wasn't typical. "Are you going to steal?"

  
"What if I am, bounty hunter?" she replied with a smirk. "What are you going to do about it?"

  
"It's not funny," they mumbled. But they weren't about to try dissuading her. They couldn't exactly moralize at her, given how long they'd been benefiting from the horse she'd stolen, and given how they'd been eating food almost certainly purchased with stolen funds. Besides, the two of them had been discussing for days that their supplies were running low.

  
She chuckled, then turned back to them. "I'll be back. I'm going to try to sneak out of there as best I can without getting seen, since not many people should be out at this hour. So I don't think we'll have to leave in too much of a hurry, but you never know. Be ready to, you know, basically jump on the horse while it's still moving when I come back for you."

  
"Come back for me?"

  
"Yeah. I'll get you when I'm done so we can get the hell out of here." Before they could say anything else, she jumped onto the horse. "See you soon! Pack your shit."

  
They watched her ride away. They kept watching while they quickly gathered up the things strewn about their little campsite, and then, when she was little more than a black speck against the slowly goldening sky and they found it unlikely that she would turn around and see them, they started walking in her direction.

  
Frankly, she had only herself to blame for not anticipating this. "Come back" for them. Really.

  
She disappeared from sight well before they could catch up, but nevertheless, it didn't take them long to reach the village. Or, rather, it didn't take them long to reach their now-riderless mare, standing a small distance from the town. That struck them as odd, until they remembered Sloane having mentioned something about their spotted gray horse being too distinctive. Maybe she thought bringing it into the heart of town would arouse suspicion--word had already spread about the Raven's storm-colored steed, at least in some places. Besides, she had wanted to be quieter than the horse was capable of being.

  
But Hurley was no Raven. And they doubted this podunk little place would have heard about what they had done, at least not yet. No one would think it strange if some redheaded little halfling rode right on in on a gray horse like they belonged there, if anyone important was even up to see them at this time.

  
The town was nothing special--smaller than a place like Goldcliff, but no less dull. The place had yet to fully shake off the caked-on night, even as the sun started to take shape on the yellow horizon. The people who were up milled about slowly and dragged the weight of their exhaustion while they walked. But the village was big enough to have a schoolhouse and an open-air market and, most importantly, a bank.

  
They stayed back from the building once they came across it, but slowly circled the nearby streets, always keeping it within their sights. The inside was dark and dead beyond the couple of windows secured with a metal mesh.

  
Or it appeared to be, until the dark began to move. They saw the shift of a shadow on the inside, and a moment later the door slowly and smoothly opened a crack, as if pushed by a light breeze. A familiar figure in black slipped out through the small opening and came into the heavy shade that still covered the building's entrance.

  
They were just noting the smoothness with which she crept along the buildings, her steps like those of a wading bird stepping through water, when a deep and disembodied voice called, “Hey! Stop!”

  
Her head snapped in the direction of the noise, and she froze. Hurley didn’t. Rather than thinking, because there was no time for that, they rode into the strip of sun that had appeared in the street and yelled, “Sloane!”

  
Her gaze was on them in an instant. Everything but her eyes was hidden by the bandana over her face, but the way she threw her hands up at them communicated “what the fuck” well enough.

  
There was the sound of more voices a moment later. She brought her fist down to her side before hurrying over to Hurley, brow deeply furrowed. As she was jumping up onto the horse’s back, they started, "Are you okay? Good thing I was here, huh? Do you want to--"

  
"Keep your _fucking_ head down!" For good measure, she shoved their head down with her palm before giving the mare a light slap on the flank. The gunshots started off seconds after they had begun to move. So did the screams. People who had ducked out their windows to look for the source of the commotion felt the gust in their hair as the pair of them blew by. Everyone who could was looking their way.

  
Hurley tightened their grip on the reins so that they would not slip from the sweat of their palms. “Where do we go now?”

  
“Back toward where we were before!” Sloane called. She was looking behind them. “Head towards the mountains!”

  
She had a point about keeping their head down. The whole point of traveling around with her had been to avoid detection until the memory of their wrongdoing had died down. Lying low was most definitely not what they were doing at the moment, face fully exposed to the rising sun as the pistols clicked into the cocked position behind them.

  
The ram’s skull that they had collected was strapped to the side of the saddle where they had left it. They reached down for it and, after missing it a few times as it bounced against the horse’s belly, grabbed it by the horn and pulled it up.

  
It wasn’t good, as a mask. It was heavy, and they had to hold it up with one hand to their face while steering with the other, and they ended up peering through just one of the eye sockets as if through a gap in a doorway. But they saw enough. They saw the way people, unthinking, cleared a path for this glaringly white and glaring visage, high astride a horse, charging their way. It shocked all of them, awed some.

  
They whipped the horse to the side and down a street that would, they hoped, lead them straight back out of town. They did their best to weave and dodge, to be a more difficult target. Eventually, as they left, the guns stopped firing, or else the noise of the bullets couldn’t compete with the wind and the pound of hooves in their ears.

  
“Nice!” she shouted to them. They didn’t look back, but that must have meant that the two of them were losing their pursuers. Hurley was losing them.

  
They went most of the day, taking the horse down to a canter when they had shrunken and disappeared the silhouettes of the folks trying to pull up behind them. In the hottest hours of the day, they were down to a fast trot. It hardly seemed to matter. No one ever appeared on the horizon. It seemed that the town would leave their capture to bounty hunters.

  
It wasn’t until the approach of evening that they stopped altogether. Sloane dismounted first, dragging the pouch of money down with her. When she pulled the bandana down from her face, they could see her broad grin, the sweat shining above her lips. “That’ll show them.”

  
Hurley just kept staring down the burning red eye of the sinking sun. Their chest was so full that they couldn’t seem to catch their breath. “Is it always like that?” they asked in a hush.

  
“Well, not always,” she answered. “Sometimes it’s hours before they notice I’ve been there, but sometimes it’s more exciting.” They had never seen her looking so light. Her teeth showed with her smile. Her head was up and her chest was out, moving as she breathed, and while it wasn’t the first time they’d noticed, the realized now more than ever how often she kept her eyes tilted down beneath the shadow of her hat and how she mostly walked around with her arms crossed over her core. Now she was shining, black and bright.

  
After several moments of staring at them, though, her excitement left, in exchange for frightful realization. She must have just now parsed the look on their own face. They could feel the ache of their own wide smile. They hadn’t stopped the whole time. “Oh, no,” she muttered.

  
Once in their life, they had seen a twister up close. It had been while they were a child that they had watched the gray-green clouds take shape. They solidified into something with purpose, intent. They wound down and down to the earth to lightly touch it, to gouge it. The sky’s gray claw spun itself into a column higher and wider than anything they’d ever seen. It scraped away the land, left it clean and treeless. They saw it pick up the roof of a faraway house, then the house itself.

  
For only a few minutes before they were pulled inside, they had stood out and stared it down. They had felt the winds, even from such a distance, toy with their hair and try to push them back, and instead held onto the railing of their porch with both hands. Stood there in front of something that could destroy them just to feel the wildness of it.

  
That was how it had felt back there, only for hours on end.

  
They laughed to themself. No way that was the last time they would feel that again.

  
“Shit,” Sloane said. “Please don’t tell me you had fun.”

* * *

Trains came to be their favorites.

  
Up close, the sound was brutalizing. It seemed that every furious noise in the world exploded out of the iron giant all at once, hissing and clanging and roaring and screeching and raging. It pummeled Hurley’s ears as they rode up alongside. Every time, it rushed through them.

  
Over everything, they would whistle, the pitch high enough to be heard above the cacophony. One long not swinging up, like the sound of a question, into two short, high chirps. The reply would come in the form of a two-tone whistle. Then Sloane would appear in the door or window of the car that she’d jumped into back when the train had been slow enough for her to board, and they would come close enough to the rattling metal for the shining stirrups to clatter against it, and they would feel the wind the train made, and moments later Sloane would have jumped onto their horse with a certain grace. The gun, a large bulge at her side, would remain undrawn for the whole affair. She had no need. The people onboard saw the Raven and did what anyone would do--and if they didn’t, the Ram was there and ready to pull her out.

  
It wasn’t the noise or the wind that got to them most, though. It was the faces. The people who leaned their heads out the train windows to watch them flee out of sight without fail, their witnessing while Hurley dodged bullet after bullet. They got drunk on it, sometimes.

  
To be the fox that dodged the dog's jaws at the last moment. To become nothing more than a path of dust and a curse in the mouths of others, and then for the dust to dissipate but for the curse, for their name invoked, to remain. How impossible.

  
They adored the impossible.

  
It was the look on her face when she turned around to see how they’d left their pursuers in the dust. How she looked, for just a moment, like she could pluck up the world for herself and stuff it in her coat pocket. It was how they were able to play a part in making her smile that way, the way she did only after they’d gotten well away.

  
They had intended to stop at some point. They really had. It’s just that it only got harder every time. After the towns got wind of a new companion of the Raven, with a handmade white mask with horns that curled back. After they’d gotten their heart pounding on a chase enough times.

  
After they’d woken up next to her, to find her whining and moaning in her sleep again, and they’d pulled her in or squeezed her hand, and she’d calmed without waking, and they’d think to themself that it was a good thing they were there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	7. Chapter 7

Changes in the winds brought moisture from an ocean that was hundreds of miles and many worlds away from the solid, sunbaked earth underfoot. The two of them spent the violent summer near the Shickshaw Hills. Sometimes they came across towns tucked in crouching amongst the mountains and stayed for days, keeping a low profile, before moving on. Sometimes they wandered in the hills themselves, so that when the black clouds snuck up on them, they could duck into one of many caves and simply watch dirt roads far below them turning to muddy rivers, as the hardened ground spat back the water instead of absorbing it and let it run off in flash floods. A couple of times, they were not quite quick enough--the sky often went from blue to dark in a few minutes' time, and the first drop would scarcely hit the sand before all of the rain came down as if spraying out of the hole of a burst pipe. It fell hard enough to sting. When that happened, Hurley would hear the slap of their waterlogged clothes as they ran for shelter and shivered in front of the lightning and thrilled at being at once so hot and so cold. By the time they had caught their breath inside the cave and stripped their shirt off for it to dry beside the fire Sloane had built, often the storm would have already moved on and left the air outside sweet and cool. They let their hair frizz as it air-dried and then slipped under the blanket that was already around Sloane's shoulders, listened to her stories and heard her voice get slower and more sighing as she became sleepy, and again they thrilled at being at once so hot and so cold.

Flashes came to Hurley as suddenly as the storms, as their lightning, and more or less intense, depending on the day. They would watch her hands as she plucked the guitar strings or poked the fire with a stick and a feeling would run all the way through them, warm their gut, make their head rush. They would then look at themself hard and ask, honestly, if they loved her.

After doing that quite a few times, they quietly accepted that the answer was yes, of course. Obviously they loved her, and she loved them. That was evidenced by the very fact that they were both still alive out here. Because how do you stay with someone at all, how do you check on her sunburns and how do you steel yourself as she carefully pulls cactus spines out of your thigh, without somehow loving her? How long do you need to lie with her and share body heat before you've shared more than that, before a part of you seeps into the other person for good, without your even realizing?

They knew how she walked when she was calm and when she was nervous, how she twisted the buttons of her duster back and forth when she was bored. They could call to mind her scent. They knew her by now, and knowing was quite a lot like loving. And so of course they loved her. There was nothing remarkable in it at all, aside from the warmth that welled inside them.

As for being in love? Maybe. Again, in flashes, in moments, maybe. Whether they were or not didn't change a thing, though. It hardly seemed to matter whether this was romance when they were with her, curled up next to her. Proximity was enough. They didn't think they wanted much else. At least, if they were tempted to wonder what else they might want, they stopped themself as best they could. For now, for once, it was enough.

They liked the night best. Sloane gathered them up against her, pressed their warmth into her as she always did. Her chin lowered down to rest on their shoulder, near the crook of their neck. They did their best to keep still and not to seem stiff. This was what always happened after she believed that Hurley had already fallen asleep, whether it was to keep them both warmer or simply because it was the same thing she always did, instinctually, when nestling into pillows. She buried herself away from the world.

  
These days, they seldom slept while she was still awake. They were simply too aware of each small movement she made. Their heart only ever began to slow when hers did. With practice, they had learned to keep their breathing steady when she gave them an accidental kick in the side as she tried to get comfortable. They were also pretty good at keeping up the ruse when wisps of hair tickled their forehead, when her nose brushed up and down their cheek in what, frankly, could only be described as nuzzling. This, too, was typical whenever she was snuggling in to sleep. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  
For their part, if they ever found themself restless, they would count their blessings, the way their mother had always said to do on sleepless nights. The cover provided by the hollows between the canyon walls, the wide desert sky heavy with stars. Both of them were alive and breathed the free air—every expansion of Sloane’s chest pressed against theirs was a reassurance of this, every one a blessing in its own right. They needed, and asked, for nothing more. They kept counting.

  
What they did not expect was the way that, now, she slowed and then finally stopped nuzzling into them. When she came to a halt, her lips were on Hurley’s cheek. Closed. They felt more of a tingling than pressure, as though one of the night moths that fed on the cactus flowers had landed there, the touch was so light.

  
Sloane was not asleep. The breaths that left her nose and ghosted across Hurley’s skin were too quick and too irregular. She simply stayed still there.

  
Any second now, they were sure, she was going to realize that they were awake. They didn’t see how she could not have known, with the way their face, their everything, had begun to burn. They quashed the sudden urge to immediately kick off all the blankets, and her. They must have positively radiated heat. It was enough to prick them from the inside, and maybe to prick her, the paper-thin skin of the lips that they could not stop feeling no matter how much they tried to tune it out like a white noise. They were not sure whether they wanted to stop feeling anyway. Her mouth was still closed.

  
But she didn’t notice that they were awake, or at the very least didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, as she began to slowly pull away—for the briefest of moments, her lips seemed to stick to their skin just a little, from the saliva—she opened her mouth, only to let out a sigh that Hurley felt shudder through her whole body. Then there was a shift and her back was to them.

  
They lay there as she slipped into sleep and then for ages afterward, wide-eyed in the dark. They were too aware of themself to rest, too conscious of the sensations all around them, the scratch of the cotton blanket and the pebbles digging into their thighs and the other warm body fitted against the curve of theirs. All of it kept them up, all of it was all too much. It was like their skin itself called out for a touch, another touch. Probably, it was a bit like going mad, if to go mad was to experience the world too much and to see in it what no one else could.

  
That was not, in fact, a kiss. Not really, anyway. It was something nameless that had come at them out of the shadows, terrifying and full of possibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	8. Chapter 8

“Look at this.” Hurley slapped the paper down onto the table and slid it in front of Sloane’s seat. “‘Notorious Outlaw ‘Raven’ Flies Faster Than Steam Locomotives.’”

She didn’t bother bringing her drink away from her lips as she glanced over at the article. “Ha! ‘Where Will She Strike Next,’ indeed,” she commented, reading the rest of the bold black headline. Then, under her breath: “Yonder bar counter again, that’s where.”

“No, listen to how they came up with that. They’re saying you hit the—”

“Hey, watch it. Tavern, remember?”

Hurley took a quick glance around at the interior of the building, dim even in the mid-afternoon. Only a few other patrons sat far from their and Sloane’s shadowed corner booth, talking in pairs or staring down into glasses of ale the color of late-day sunlight. They lowered their voice anyway. “They’re saying the Raven hit the Kolibri First Bank two weeks ago.”

“Which happened.”

“Right, but then they say she held up a general store in Bixley two days later. That second one couldn’t have happened if we’d wanted it to. There’s no way to get from one of those towns to the other in two days, not even on the trains.”

“Uh-huh.” Her voice didn’t rise above a whisper. She ran her fingernail through a groove in the wooden countertop. “It’s a stretch alright. Do they have pictures in there, too? What do the Raven and Ram look like?”

“Oh, sinister, like usual. I’m wearing a skull on my face and they just blacked out where your eyes should be.”

“Nice.”

“Well, yes, we look pretty badass. Doesn’t that bother you, though?”

“Does what bother me? You don’t really think they’re any closer to getting us, do you?”

They scoffed. “Doubt it. Not if they’re really stupid enough to believe we can travel faster than a train. But someone’s obviously pretending to be you. Stealing from places and letting you take the fall for it.”

"Oh, that. Not really." She shrugged as she swirled around the last vestiges at the bottom of her glass. "If someone wants to give the Raven the credit, let them. Anyway, if she's got a copycat, that means she's got a reputation, right?"

"Sure, but would you--or, anybody--really want to let someone else write your stories?"

  
"Gods, you make it sound so dramatic. People will think what they want. That's alright." Her words had the easy lilt she took on when she was tipsy (not drunk, though--they had seen the hot, shambling, giggly mess that was a drunk Sloane, and she never got to that point unless it was only the two of them for miles around). She slowly stretched her arms up over her head. Her jacket was off, so that they could see the rolling movement of her shoulders and back under her shirt. Then she slumped further in her chair and put her feet up on the empty seat across from her. They liked it when her body and mind loosened like this, sprawling out over a world that had wanted to contain her. It was--and they knew this was dangerous--beautiful. They wondered if she could somehow unfold in this way all the time, without a consistent supply of booze, or else the other form of intoxication that came on just after a chase. They'd like to let that happen if they could.

  
Her head tilted lazily in their direction with a smirk. "Anyway, who wouldn't want to be like the Raven?"

  
They rolled up the newspaper. "Take. This. Seriously." They whacked her lightly over the head again and again. A couple of weeks ago, they would have probably given her a playful shove. Now, though, they were more acutely aware of what their touch could mean. More than no-strings-attached affection, perhaps. Materially, nothing had changed, and she certainly didn't seem to notice, or act like the not-kiss had ever happened. But there was a strange new weight to any action they took around her now, potentially heavy with meaning. Even now, before they could stop it, they started to perform the post-contact mental calculation. They tried to determine whether they had gone too far, giving her the wrong idea, or not far enough, letting her know that something was wrong with them.

  
Regardless, she laughed and grabbed the paper out of their hand. "What's it say about the Ram, huh?"

  
"I didn't get that far yet."

  
She opened it and scanned for awhile before snorting. "Gods."

  
"What?"

  
"It's so stupid."

  
"Come on, what are they saying?"

  
She tapped a paragraph with her finger. "Oh, just that the Raven and the Ram are having a tawdry criminal love affair. A twisted romance that can only flourish in corruption and sin, evidently. Who the fuck wrote this?"

  
They kept their mouth shut. Something was going to come spilling out the second they opened it. Maybe they wanted it to.

  
"Wow. It gets worse."

  
"Sloane?"

  
They thought that they'd regret it as soon as they said it. But she looked their way and gave them her full attention. It was hard to regret anything when her eyes were on them. They wanted this. Bad.

  
They took a breath and said, quietly, "If enough people believe a story, it might as well be true. That's what you said, right?"

For the miniscule amount of time it took realization to set in, she looked merely curious. Then, she sobered faster than they’d seen anyone sober in their life.

  
Much as they wanted to, they weren’t about to push for a response. But when they noticed that she sort of wasn’t breathing, they thought that perhaps a little nudge was in order. “Um, Sloane?”

  
“Oh,” was her delayed reply. She said nothing else, which wasn’t terribly helpful for their own nerves.

  
“Hey.” The barkeep walked toward them with her hands on her hips. “Y’all have been sitting there awhile. Are you gonna drink more or pay up or—“

  
“Here.” She smacked down about three times as much as they owed onto the table without breaking eye contact with Hurley. The woman walked away with her head still turned around to look at the pair of them, while Hurley nodded in the direction of the door. Sloane followed them out. Her walking had gone stiff.

  
Hurley went over to their cloud-gray mare and absently stroked her when she shoved her nose into their chest. They made themself consider what they had stopped short of considering for the past two weeks. Possibly, they had just fucked up everything beyond repair. It wasn’t as though they could simply have some distance from one another if things became awkward. They needed each other out there. Hurley needed her out there. They hated distance. They hated that they were, and maybe would forever be, afraid to touch her.

  
When they felt brave enough, she glanced at Sloane. She was staring at the ground now. The toe of her boot made a rut as she ran it slowly through the sand. She seemed to study it hard, as though she were unearthing some secret.

  
At last, she started softly, “Are you…” Her lips seemed to start to form the words, but no more sound came from her.

  
“In love with you?”

  
She didn’t respond.

  
“I think…” They let out a long breath. “I’ve thought that I was in love a couple times before, but it felt different than this does. I don’t know. It feels like a good different, but I don’t know what it means.”

  
Sloane just looked at them. Her blinks were soft and slow. Just loudly enough for them to her, she said, “I do.”

  
The door to the tavern swung open behind them. “Hold on!” The barkeep strode out and stood to face them. “I know you two.”

  
Hurley took a step back and glanced Sloane's way. Her bullshitting, they had found, came in handy at times like these, when they needed to be smooth-talked out of a situation. They waited eagerly for her to pull them out of this.

  
She stood there and blinked at the woman. "No you don't," she said, and then scrambled up onto the horse.

  
As the two of them blew through the streets of the small town, Sloane shouted over the hoof beats, “How long have you felt like this again?!”

  
“I don’t really know! Awhile!”

  
“Are you telling me we could have had this conversation ages ago?!”

  
“Well it took me a bit of time to figure it out! You always could have said something!”

  
“Yeah, well, maybe I was also trying to sort out my shi_LEFT_!”

  
Hurley pulled hard on the reins immediately, and without issue, the horse turned 90 degrees and shot off down a narrow side street while barely slowing, just like they’d trained her to do. As they pivoted, Hurley took an instant to look back and see the gathering group of townsfolk behind them. How many of them were in pursuit and how many were simple oglers, it was hard to say. Not that it mattered. They’d all be left well behind as always. They thought the Raven could fly. Now they could see the Ram charge.

  
“Damn you’re good at that!”

  
“Yeah I’m fan-fucking-tastic!” Hurley shrieked. It wasn’t just the chase this time that sent the blood coursing warm through them. That wasn't the only reason they felt like they were getting closer to the sky with every leap the horse made. They'd seen it in Sloane. It had come through clear as a shaft of light. I do.

  
"Well, now what?" they asked.

  
"What?!"

  
"I mean what are we gonna do about this? Are you gonna kiss me for real now?!"

  
"Guess I could, couldn't I? I could do it right now!"

  
"Wait, now?!" They didn't have a second more before she pressed her lips sloppily against their cheek, then did it again and again rapid-fire, tickled their neck with it. "Hey, wait!" They were barely comprehensible as they shrieked with laughter. "Stop, wait until I can do it back!"

  
"You brought this on yourself, you asshole!" She stayed relentless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Quick heads-up that this chapter contains discussions of:  
-Physical assault  
-Violence (non-graphic), specifically using blades and knives  
-Scarring/injury  
-Trauma
> 
> Please read with caution!

Their first time was far from the first occasion that Hurley had seen her bare back. They saw it all the time incidentally, when she took her shirt off in the hottest and laziest hours of the day or when she was washing. It was just that nowadays, they didn’t turn their head right away. They let themself look rather than just seeing it. They saw the faint scars near her hips and the white-ink tattoo on her shoulder blade. When she sat up straight, they saw the long, narrow dip between the muscles where her spine lay. They followed the curve of it. They saw the smoothness of her skin and felt almost as though they were touching the small of her back, still.

It was bold of them, maybe (but when had there ever been a better time to be bold?), but they thought she might be keeping her back exposed on purpose. Surely it didn’t take her that long to dry off after a cold bath under the water pump they’d come across. And sure, maybe she liked the night air on her skin, or maybe she liked how much Hurley liked seeing the moonlight on it.

Their grin had been there the entire time that they had been studying her sideways, still lying in bed and in an evening’s sweat. They could go on all day, following her lines, tracing the scars and the tattoo that inexplicably read CB43. Poorly done, too--wobbly, whitish lines.

In the dim light, they hadn’t immediately noticed that the letters and numbers were rendered in the same color as the scars. The other scars. This wasn’t ink. This was an old injury like all the rest, a series of marks made of raised, rough skin. Hurley sat up slowly. They looked and looked again, running over the old damage to her shoulder with their eyes, but for all they looked it over, they couldn’t make it untrue. It didn’t go away

And anyway, as much as they wanted to, they couldn’t sort through the terrible questions they had in time to ask any of them before she covered up.

* * *

It was barely two days before they couldn’t take it anymore.

Before they could stop themself, they said too quickly, "Can I ask you something?"

Sloane's eyebrows arched up a little, which was enough of an okay for them to go on. The air was cold and made them cold as they sucked it in, causing their chest to puff out a little, instinctively bracing. Why? Even if it did turn out that it was too personal, that they were overstepping, Sloane would forgive them. There was nothing to worry about there. It was the idea of getting an answer that gave them pause. Not knowing was terrible. There was no guarantee that knowing would be any better.

But they were in it now. "I was wondering..." Hurley reached towards Sloane--from the front, always keeping their hand in view--and set it on her shoulder, as they had so many times before. She closed her eyes for several seconds when it landed there, and, out of habit, turned her head to kiss their knuckles before looking at them again. Slowly, then, they slipped their palm under the fabric of her shirt and felt for the etching in her smooth shoulder blade. "Could you tell me what this is from?"

They might as well have given her a slap in the face. Everything up to her eyelids snapped rigid, as though she had been struck with a sudden chill.

Immediately, they withdrew their hand. "I'm sorry. You don't have to, I just...you don't have to."

She stared at them wide-eyed for a moment longer. Then, with a long exhale, she seemed to slump. Resignation, it seemed. If they were being honest, it might have even looked like defeat. She sucked in her cheek and chewed on it, then glanced downward. "No, I can."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I guess you were bound to notice sometime. It's alright if you know." She turned her whole body toward the fire, sitting cross-legged with a hand on each knee. "Gotta say, it's not a fun story, though."

Hurley settled against her arm. "I'm not only interested in the fun ones."

It might have been the flickering shadows playing across her face that Hurley noticed, or it might have been the upward twitch of her lips, the smile that she couldn't quite stop.

For a long time, they both watched the sparks from the fire get lost among the stars. Or, at least, Hurley watched it happen, when they could allow themself not to watch Sloane. They could not be sure what she saw, really, when she looked up at the same sky.

It couldn't have been anything good, if she was taking this long to gather her thoughts. The slow twist began deep in their guts. To calm themself, and hopefully her as well, they slipped their hand into hers and pressed their forehead against her shoulder, eyes shut. Then they prayed it would help. They were getting ready for her to change her mind, to tell them that she didn't know how to say it, not now. That would have been fine. Maybe a part of them would have preferred it.

That was why it shook them when they finally heard, out of nowhere, "I'm not easy to catch, Red."

They snorted and looked up to find that Sloane was also grinning, this time most certainly. Playful, proud. "Yeah, I'm aware."

"Are you, though? I mean, I've been doing this a hell of a long time. Robbed a general store when I was 17 and never looked back."

"I know the story," they assured. "You nabbed thirty-two bucks and one of those really long sticks of peppermint from the jars."

"Well, not quite."

"Right, you didn’t take the peppermint. You just licked the entire thing and stuck it back in with the rest, like an asshole."

"Like an asshole, yeah. Guy who owned the store owned the rest of that damn town too. You can bet your ass I made his comfy life a little less comfy. Not so much 'cause that was a lot of money for him, but it was a quiet place, you know? Having someone on the loose scared the hell out of everyone, and you know, I thought, good, let them be scared of me. They should've been. Especially when word got out that the shopkeeper came in, saw me jump out through a first-floor window, and saw neither hide nor hair of me when he looked out. I'd flown."

"Free as a bird."

"Damn right."

Hurley chuckled, trying to make it sound lighter than they felt. Their nerves got worse as time passed.

"And then there were my first few banks," she went on. "Know how hard it is trying to rob a place unarmed? Those are some goddamn stories."

They let a beat pass, then said softly, "Yes, love, I think I know all of those."

Her smile dropped, and they almost winced at it. But both of them knew what she was doing--she was deflecting, maybe without even meaning to. Putting it off.

Her breath came out in a whoosh, through a little "o" made by her mouth. "Well. Point is, I've only ever been caught once before, prior to..." She glanced over at them and faintly smirked. "Well, you know. The other time was when I was sort of still starting out. Inexperienced, let's say. I'd hit a bank or two by that point, so I had number of people after me, as you'd expect."

"Yes."

"Yeah. I mean, no point in giving you the gory details, right? I fucked up and walked into an ambush. Something, by the way, that I would have been able to spot from a mile away nowadays. That posse was a bunch of sloppy fucks. But whatever. They tied me up and started taking me back, and I..." She hummed an unresolved note and scratched the back of her head briefly. "Tell me something, Hurley. Do you think I was particularly fighty when your group got me?"

"I...don't especially like thinking about it, but no. I thought you were remarkably calm."

"Ha. 'Calm' is probably not the word I'd use to describe it, but yeah, I don't think I was struggling a whole lot. I told myself I was biding my time and shit, and also I didn't want to look like a moron when I couldn't get away." She shook her head. "There's a lot that...I don't remember everything, but I know I wasn't thinking like that back when I was younger. I was pretty freaked out, I think, so the details are weird, but I think I fought the whole way. Which was dumb, but there you go. I think I thought they'd want to fuck with me less if I showed them I could fight."

Or she had just been afraid.

"Well, they weren't keen on that, if you can believe it," she finished almost inaudibly.

They surprised themself with their ability to speak despite the dryness in their mouth. "And they did that to you."

"I definitely didn't do it to myself."

"Why...why CB43?"

"You can't guess, bounty hunter?"

"I...when I saw it the first time I thought of a brand." Hurley turned away to look down at their hand. Their fingers made ruts in the dry earth as they ran through it. Come morning, they would find the crescents of dirt beneath their short nails to be just a little bit darker. "I wasn't with them long enough to know all the ins and outs. You know that," they murmured.

"Yeah, I know," she replied, a bit softer this time. "You're not far off, though, I guess. Lots of prisons, if you got a long sentence, they'll tattoo you with an ID so they know who you are. And so it's harder for you to hide, if you manage to escape. Someone can just pull down your shirt from your shoulder and know you're the one they're looking for. Well, this posse that caught me...they got shit-faced when we got back to their camp and they had me tied up. Think they just got so drunk, eventually one of them had the bright idea they could mark me, too, to keep me from trying to run."

She ran her hand continuously across the back of her neck, getting her fingers caught in the fine hair at her nape, and went on, "Um, I think mainly they wanted to make me hurt, though. I pulled some shit trying to get away from them--trying to spook their horses into running off, that sort of thing. Anyway. Obviously, the second I saw one of them coming at me with a knife I did my damndest to get away, but, I mean, four against one. I didn't have a prayer. They got a few more ropes on me and honestly nearly squeezed the damn life out of me, that shit was so tight. I couldn't move at all after that. So."

There was a pause after the "so." She seemed to wait for them to react, or not to react. But they thought they’d vomit if they opened their mouth. They weren’t even surprise. Some part of them had always known this to be the most probable explanation.

They pictured, for the umpteenth time, the look of the lines in her skin and could now imagine their formation in reverse, the tissue opened up again and the clotted blood unclotted, at the moment when those absolute rat bastards, those filthy fucking scum...they knew scars. The blade point had certainly gone deep into muscle. Maybe scraped bone.

They almost didn't hear her speak up again. Her voice was a monotone murmur. "I'm pissed at myself about it, mainly, I guess. It kind of worked. I mean I stopped giving them a hard time after that. Just sat there and let them drag me around after that. Stupid."

"You? No you weren't," they replied loudly, reflexively. "Besides, you got away, didn't you?"

She gave a small scoff. "Well, yeah, no shit. I don't think they'd been hunters for very long. They didn't even lock me in the cart at night and they only tied my hands in front of me. Didn't even keep all that close of a watch on me. I just chewed at those fucking ropes until they finally got loose enough. That's why my front teeth are a little bent."

"I'd just assumed you'd gotten into a fight." They spoke into the crook of their elbow, staring into nothing, with their mouth pressed against their arms that had been crossed over their curled-up knees.

"And as far as anyone but you or me is concerned, that's exactly what happened. Anyway, yeah, I got away in the night. Those guys were idiots, luckily. Couldn't even--"

"How old?"

"Hmm?"

Without looking her way, they took in a breath and forced out the words. "How old were you?"

"Oh. Uh, eighteen."

Without a moment's hesitation, they nearly leapt from their position next to her and pulled her to them and held her, but not for her sake. Not entirely, anyway. They did it mostly because they felt themself shaking apart from the inside out and needed to hold onto her just to hold together themself. They held the fabric of her shirt in their fists because otherwise they'd clench until their nails bit their palms. With what could be called instinct, in its truest sense, they squeezed her as if to shield her core, to retroactively protect.

There was a momentary pause before they felt a short, soft laugh on their cheek. "Hey, come on, I'm okay." Her arms slipped underneath theirs and circled around their back. She patted them absently, almost awkwardly, as though they were the one in need of comfort. "That's just the past."

"It's not," they choked. "It's not, though. You still have nightmares. That's now."

There were several moments filled by nothing but the snap of the firewood before they heard her murmur, "Not as many these days." She waited for them to look up at her before giving them a long roll of her eyes. The fact that she could roll her eyes at a time like this--the fact that she was still her at a time like this--brought them immeasurable relief. "Besides, you have nightmares, too."

"This isn't about me," they said with just a touch too much force behind her voice. They sniffed and tried to straighten. "I'm sorry. Are you...alright after that?"

"Yeah, I'm good. You're not."

"I don't know if I believe you."

"Well, that's your problem."

The air buzzed with life as it always did at night.

"I'm sorry," they said again.

"Oh, gods. For what?"

"You must have thought about that all the time when we first met." They pressed their head against her chest. They couldn't look at her. "When my...my group had you, I mean."

"Mmm." The answer that wasn't an answer at all. Her hand went up to scratch the side of her neck. "I don't know. A lot was happening at the time. I don't recall that being a huge deal."

"But it must have mattered! There's no way you couldn't have been thinking about that, right? I...I hurt you." They blinked their tears away enough to see her. "I hurt you. I at least had a part in all that, and I'm sorry."

"Well, how the hell could you have known?" she asked, in the rushed, mumbling tone that told them she would not be receptive to this topic anymore. That didn't mean they didn't want to argue and insist that not knowing was no excuse, and as a former scumbag lawkeeper, they should know. But they had probably pushed her more than enough for a night. "Anyway, I socked you in the face more than once, so I think we're even."

They weren't sure what it meant about them that they could laugh at a time like this. It felt a little grotesque to do so, even as the giggles came out of them. But they weren't surprised. "I guess you did."

Sloane shifted so that her chin could rest on their shoulder, nuzzling them like a cat, and Hurley let her touch be a distraction. They tried not to think about the details that she had left unmentioned, restrained their mind before it could fill in the blanks. They would just break again.

They stayed like that for what must have been several minutes and for what would have been half the night had Sloane not finally spoken up again. "Actually, can I tell you something?"

"Yes, of course," they answered, though they feared the idea that this, somehow, could get worse.

"I think about it a lot, if I'm being honest. Pretty much every time we're on the run and the assholes chasing us get a little too close. I always wonder if this is the time it happens again." She took a deep breath that they did not hear her release. Her voice sounded like it came through tight lungs and a tight throat. "One day I'm gonna be right."

"Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

Her eyes were downcast. "I've been doing this a long time," she murmured to the earth. "Longer than most outlaws get, or so I hear. By all accounts, I should've been in a prison or shot well before now."

"But you're too fast for anyone. You're too clever."

"And I've had dumb luck on my side a number of times. Those people that caught me the first time happened to be plain incompetent, and gods, the time after that...I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it hadn't been for you. None of that was me, and I don't think I'm going to get lucky a third time, Hurley, I really don't." She sighed. "Anyway, nobody can run forever. Every day I get older is a day I get a little worse at it."

They scoffed. "You're not old. You're my age."

"No, but I'm only getting older. Do you want to know something? After I got out of those ropes, Red, I ran like hell. More than I ever had in my life. I don't know how long I went exactly, but I remember it turning from night to day to night again, at least once. The whole time I ran until my legs went out under me, and by that time I'd manage to find my way up the hills to some caves, and I slept for two days. But all I remember was lying there and thinking, if they went and managed to track me down, there wasn't a damn thing I could do."

"Sloane..."

"There's still nothing I can do. Not if I'm not fast enough."

She was hunched as if a great hand were pressing steadily down on her just between the shoulders.

Hurley sat still for as long as they could stand before they moved so that they were facing her again. It was only when their thumb brushed across her cheekbone that her eyes lifted to meet theirs. Good--they needed her full attention for this.

"Listen up. This?" They pressed their palm to her back again. "That's over, alright? I swear on the gods, I won't let this happen again. I promise it won't."

Her smile came with a twinge of sadness. "You're good to me, Red, you know that?"

"I'm not remotely kidding," they said immediately, and they heard the strain in their own voice, the almost-growl that came out deeper than intended. "Next person who lays a hand on you is gonna get it broken. You know I can do it." It hadn't quite occurred to them until that moment that they could and would, if necessary, kill for her, just as they would ultimately kill in self-defense if the need arose. At this point, they hardly knew the difference.

And then she gave them that half-smiling look, as though she had stumbled upon something strange and inviting. That lovely little tilt of her head, those eyes that narrowed in assessment and glinted with curiosity, and never mind her dark hair and flapping black clothes and feathers, because this was when she more than ever resembled the clever, ever-searching raven. "You know, you sound so damn sure of yourself all the time that sometimes I think you could make me believe anything."

"Well, you'd better believe it. You're safe now."

"Hmm..." She grinned more broadly and reached forward to brush a curl away from their forehead. "Alright, little Ram, I can't fight with you. Though you might be less of a stubborn ass and let me return the favor once in awhile."

"Oh, and you haven’t been? Don’t think I don’t know why I’m always the getaway while you insist on going in to do the stealing. You’re protecting me, aren’t you?”

“Hurley, sweetheart, that’s because you don’t have a subtle bone in your body.”

“I can be sneaky!”

“I know. You just choose not to be.”

“I was sneaky enough to get the drop on you back whe--” Hurley stopped. Inside them, something fell like a heavy object from a shelf. They had almost started laughing again.

“Gods, will you stop?” she groaned. Her whole head rolled this time, not just her eyes.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Yeah, but like I said, no subtlety. Don’t be guilty. I thought we established awhile ago that we can joke about that time.”

“How can I find it funny right now?”

“For my sake, at least. I don’t like having a lot of things I can’t make a joke out of.”

Hurley bit down on the inside of their cheek and did not look at her. “I just...I want to make it right.”

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Are you going to sleep soon? Want me to keep watch?”

“No, it’s fine.” She didn’t speak again until she had faced away from them. “Come to bed when you’re ready, though.”

“I’ll come now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	10. Chapter 10

And so on they went.

  
Neither of their lives stagnated. With the way the two of them moved, never staying anywhere nearly long enough to get used to it, they didn’t even really have routine. There were shifts to adjust to constantly, things large and small to have on their minds at all times. The changes in the weather that meant they would soon need the money for more layers at night. The increase in the number of murders blamed on the Raven in the papers, and the increase in the number of unsafe towns that were on high alert for a tall woman in a black hat and a stout, small redhead. They couldn’t afford to be too comfortable.

  
What their lives did have, once those two lives became indistinguishable enough to be functionally one, was rhythm. There was an underlying beat that drove the song, no matter how wild it got or how the melody rose and dipped. There was a consistency to the spiking highs of their thefts followed by the long periods of running and hiding and quiet. And of the smoke from the griddle against the morning sky’s slate before she woke. And of her tendency to use their satchel and then somehow get dust in it every time, which kind of bothered them even though they kept lending it to her anyway. And of whispers during sex. And of the naps they took at midday when they were really on the run, so they could travel through the night, and the moments of absolute desert silence before they fell asleep. All of it familiar and all of it new every time.

  
Which was why it shook them up so much when the rhythm was broken, just for a moment.

  
Because instead of yet another robbery like all the others that they managed to pull off, this time, they didn’t even get to Sloane boarding the train. In the mere seconds before the deaths occurred, Hurley saw a figure crouched on top of one of the rattling cars, all in black. Wide black hat, black duster, black bandana over the face. Something that seemed, for a moment, recognizable. But the Raven, the real Raven, was still sitting behind Hurley on the horse. This was something alien.

  
And then the figure, with a dark sash trailing behind them, jumped into the train car’s interior. From outside, Hurley heard the punch of a few gunshots over the locomotive’s roar. They thought they heard the screams, too, but that might have been imagined. They didn’t imagine the blood on the windows, though. That much was certain.

  
There was nothing Hurley could have done in that moment. That didn’t stop them from trying to ride over there and jump into the train after the person in the sash. They would have, too, had Sloane not wrestled the reins out of their grip and sped in the other direction in spite of their shouting at her to stop, stop, couldn’t she see there were people dying in there.

  
That night, they didn’t sleep curled up next to her for the first time in months, even after realizing that they had acted in a way that was too rash even for them. They regretted it, and settled into the familiar curve of her body every night after that.

* * *

"You almost done with that?"

  
"Yeah. Been ages since I cleaned this saddle properly."

  
"Well, we haven't had saddle soap in awhile."

  
"Thing was filthy. Hope Assmaster is going to like having it clean."

  
"Sloane, you're the light of my life, and if you call our horse Assmaster ever again I'm going to fucking deck you."

  
They heard her snort above the soft scrape of the brush against the leather. Without seeing for themself, Hurley could picture how her hands looked in that moment, the sheen of water on her knuckles and the dust under her ragged cuticles partly washed away. They imagined the white swirls as she worked the lather into the tack. "Well, then we should actually name the fucking horse!" she answered.

  
"Yeah, well, you only wanted to name the horse Horse, so we didn't reach a compromise."

  
"That's not true. I also suggested naming it Bastard."

  
"Oh, right. Among other things like that, yes. You motherfucker."

  
She laughed again, and Hurley was lifted up a little more towards the sky. It happened every time she breathed. The two were back-to-back, with them leaning against her as she worked, hunched forward a little. Their head rested against her back, turned up towards the blue expanse. Far, far overhead, a hawk traced a ring in the sky over and over. It looked cut from paper, wings stretched flat and never flapping as it glided weightless, just barely tilting its body to turn. It seemed that it could go on forever like that. They thought it was beautiful, but they didn't tell Sloane to look, not yet. Probably she would have simply scoffed and said that she had seen plenty of hawks--though she would certainly watch it for a long time anyway, following its path with her eyes.

  
More than that, though, they said nothing because of something selfish in them that wanted this moment all to themself. They wanted to take in every sensation and preserve it, remember it just as it was, the sand on their legs and the smell of leather and her breath, how it sounded near them, how it felt against them. They wanted to hold onto all of it for as long as possible, undisturbed and unbroken as the bird's circle. How fortunate it was that Sloane needed to clean the saddle today.

  
They paused. That was an odd thought, one that had slipped in softly without their noticing. They had been having many strange thoughts like that recently, as a matter of fact, when the moments were mundane and quiet and their guard was down. The way they felt was strange, too. Like they were full to bursting, their chest warm and wound-up when it shouldn't have been. Like their body were anticipating the thrill of running from some sheriff or the rush of the wind in their hair, only there was no thrill to be found, only the mundanity of keeping the fires going and picking burs out of their socks and cleaning their tack.

  
And her.

  
Something was going to happen if they weren't careful.

  
Hurley, needing to do something with themself, turned around to watch her. As soon as she felt their weight leave her, she looked over her shoulder and grinned when her eyes found them again. That woman shattered them.

  
She turned her back to them and went back to the saddle. "Bastard is a phenomenal name, I think."

  
"Let's get married."

  
She didn't react right away. It seemed almost as if she had not heard, until a second later, when her ears pricked all the way up and the sentence seemed to sink in. For Hurley's part, they said it and immediately felt the way it probably felt just after swan-diving off a cliff, before hitting the ground--less like falling and more like flight. They felt bigger than their body could contain.

  
The brushing had stopped. She still didn't turn around for some time. Then, slowly, she faced Hurley and blinked at them hard, as if into direct sunlight. Her eyes were wide enough to look almost owlish, and she seemed, at the moment, incapable of processing any emotion aside from dumb shock. They weren't sure how they mustered the self-control needed to keep from jumping at her, pulling her to them, into them. Everything inside them down to their bones seemed to quiver like a just-struck tuning fork as they waited for her response.

  
She gave it, alright. "Like," she started, very slowly. "Like...to each other? Wait, fuck--"

  
Oh, this beautiful, fucking wonderful idiot.

  
They started laughing out loud, the sound coming up from deep in their belly. First they laughed at the absolute absurdity of that response and then they did it simply because they couldn't stop, because it self-perpetuated, for the hell of it, for the need that they had to release the joy that had been ready to come up out of them the whole time, and all they could think was that gods, they adored her, they adored her. They laughed even after they began to ache, and they ached a good ache.

  
Of course, she only looked more lost and flustered and like a confused bird than before. "Uh. Are you good?"

  
"Oh my gods!" they practically shrieked. "Sloane I--fuck--I can't believe you!"

  
"Oh, okay, you weren't...so that was a joke? You weren't serious?"

  
"No!" they gasped out, tears starting to fall from their eyes. "No, I was--ha!"

  
"No you weren't joking or no you weren't serious? Hurley, this is honestly the most confused I've ever been, could you get ahold of--stop that and answer me, dammit! Stop fucking laughing at me!" she yelled even as Hurley half-fell into her arms, delirious and stupid with happiness and not caring how they must have looked.

  
"Oh my gods." They made some attempt, finally, to get their breathing under control. They still shook with giggles, and they could barely see, between the tears and the way the smile on their face made their eyes crinkle and squint. "Oh my gods, you moron, I love you! I..." With one hand, they scrubbed the moisture from their flushed cheeks and then looked up at her, at the little twists of hair at her forehead pasted down by sweat, at the movement of her scar when she wrinkled her nose, at all of it. They thought that they might not be able to bear it much longer. "Gods, I...I love you." More softly this time, but they could still feel themself smiling like a damn fool, not caring that it hurt.

  
But they didn't see what they wanted to see when they wiped their eyes. As she heard them speak, a grin began to show itself on her face, but snapped back to a frown like a rubber band. She gave a rapid little shake of her head and stared into space with her brow furrowed, as though some calculation were not adding up in her mind. She'd moved on from pure shock, it seemed. Now there was a distinct element of distress to her as well.

  
They felt themself start to sink back to the ground. "Sloane?"

  
Her gaze met theirs again. She looked pained, like she was struggling. Instinctively, Hurley brought their hand up to her cheek, let their ring finger trace her jaw. That only seemed to hurt her more, somehow, even as she leaned into it, eyes tightly closed.

  
"Do you..." they started. "Do you not want to?"

  
She only seemed more taken aback at that than before, and did not answer. For the first time in a long time, they felt that they truly could not read her, like in those very first days. The idea terrified them.

  
"I..." They swallowed. They had been cocky, again, had made assumptions. "I thought...I mean, we've talked over and over about how we both can't see ourselves being apart, so I thought the...the next step--"

  
"It's not about what I want."

  
Now it was their turn to take a pause. "What? Of course it is."

  
"Hurley..." She let out her breath. "What you or I want doesn't matter. In that regard, anyway. I mean, look at where--at how we live. Look at who we are. How in the gods' name do you expect us to get married? I mean, like...like, did you even think about how hard it's gonna be to get an officiant alone?"

  
"Well, I didn't mean we'd do it now, or soon. We'd have to get the money for it and find a place and all that, obviously. Are you...are you seriously thinking about logistics right now?"

  
"No! No, listen, it's not even that, mainly. It's..." She looked up to search the sky and seemed to find nothing, not even a cloud. "It's like...what you're talking about, marriage, that's such a long-term idea."

  
"So what? I thought we were...well, I'm ready to be in this long-term."

  
“I know, but it’s like…” She seemed to search all around, looking everywhere but at Hurley, and finally held her open hand out toward their mare. “It’s like the horse.”

  
“I don’t understand.”

  
"The stupid horse. The reason we haven’t named it is because it could be gone tomorrow.”

  
“What are you...we’ve had her for three years now. Sloane, what does this have to do with anything?”

  
“Listen to me! We're not...we don't live the sort of life where we can plan long-term, you know? Not really. This is the kind of...career, I guess, that makes you take things day-to-day, and you can't try thinking beyond that. You can't. And look, I love our day-to-day right now. I love...well, I love you. But to think about this lasting that long..." She sucked in air, and again it looked like it hurt, like maybe her rib was still bruised from their narrow escape from the town of Agua Fria. She contemplated the sand. "I'm on borrowed time, and you at least should have something better than this someday. You're better than this."

  
"Wait, wait. Excuse me?" Now, the words came out of their mouth hot. "You're gonna look me in the eye after three fucking years of partnership or whatever you wanna call this, I've told you I knew what I was getting into and I'm in it now, and you're gonna tell me it's not for me? Or, fuck, that I'm too stupid to know what I want?"

  
"Oh, fuck off, Hurley. You know that's not what I meant."

  
"I'm not done yet! You know what? Just because you can't think past tomorrow doesn't mean I can't, and listen, I'm looking way past that, and it looks phenomenal from here. I want it so, so bad." They put themself right in front of her, reached their hand out so that it almost-but-not-quite touched her knee. "We don't have to just think about when we're going to build the next campfire."

  
"You're not getting it! Yes we do!"

  
"Look, Sloane, what do you want?"

  
"I told you, it doesn't--"

  
"I don't care if you think it matters or not! Answer the question!"

  
"Well, Hurley, you know what I'd just love?" She was using that voice they hated, the venomous one that they had first heard when the two had spoken in the back of a wagon several lifetimes ago. "If you dropped this shit."

  
"Why? Tell me why. Because you don't want to marry me? Just say that and I'll leave it alone from now on, alright? I won't bring it up again."

  
Her eyes burned. But her mouth still stayed pressed into a line. After a few moments, she relented, whipped her head to the side to glare at nothing.

  
There was a warmth in Hurley's chest. It might have been anger, still, or it might have been hope.

  
"You're scared, aren't you?" They moved closer to her. "I know you are. I figured out why you're mad."

  
"Oh, good, I can't wait for this psychoanalysis," she spat.

  
"No, really. You're worried I'm getting your hopes up for nothing. 'Cause you think it'd be impossible or impractical." In the face of her stoniness, they almost laughed again. "You don't think I really intend to marry you, do you?

  
She let out a long sigh. When she brought her eyes back to them again, she looked more exhausted than anything else. "Alright, fine, then. How do you propose we get a legal marriage, huh? You tell me how we're going to get rings on our fingers and avoid getting cuffs on our wrists right after."

  
"North," they blurted.

  
"What?"

  
"We'll leave here. Get the money for it, cross the northern border to Xila, go somewhere where we're not gonna get chased and nobody knows our name. Clear out of the country. That's where we'll have a new life. I've been thinking how we could do it for a long time. I got plenty of plans I've thought out."

  
Slowly, her dry lips spread into a grin, amused and lopsided and so, so her and so, so good. She still looked tired, like it was an effort to lift her face into a smile against gravity. But it was real nonetheless. "No you haven't," she said, "and no you don't."

  
They looked at the ground sheepishly, though they returned her smile. "Alright. I guess I'm still a bad liar."

  
"You really are," she chuckled.

  
"Aw, there's that laugh." Hurley closed the distance between them as they went to nuzzle under her chin. In return, she released her breath in a soft hum. The note vibrated inside them. "I mean it, though. Anyway, I have to keep my promise somehow, right? About making sure you don't get hurt. If it takes leaving here to do that, then I'll do it."

  
"You really wanna give this up? The crime, the fame? You?"

  
They shrugged. "I didn't say it'd be right away. I'll cope when the time comes. Anyway, I don't think either of us are ready for that yet, but someday. And...and you were right about me, I guess. I can't go on forever either, probably."

  
"No one can," she murmured.

  
Their hands gripped her more tightly around the waist as they buried themself in the scent of her leather. In response, she fell slowly, lying down on her back as she continued to hold them, until they found themself resting on her chest and looking down. And there she was.

  
Tears came back to them all too easily. It was hard to say why they started falling now. Something about the way she looked at them, though she looked at them every day. Something about how her expression seemed bared to them. They could feel the burn in their eyes already. Everything in them burned. They struggled to blink the wetness away. They had to see her clearly for this, look her right in the eye.

  
"Sloane, do you want me?"

  
Her eyes answered before her lips. "Yes."

  
"You have me, then." They bent towards her, until they could feel her breath on them, inside them as they opened their mouth to whisper, "Tell me what it'll take for me to have you."

  
She looked at them for a long time. She was trying not to let herself believe it, they knew. Trying not to set herself up for disappointment. Her mouth stayed pressed into a tight frown, resigned. But they were still just looking at her eyes, where they saw, now and again, flickers of hope, the same way they saw flecks of gold among her green when the sun hit just right. Then she exhaled and shook her head slowly. "Probably your life, for one," she murmured.

  
Their reply in her ear was more air than sound. "So be it," they said, and when they did, they thought they tasted blood in their mouth. And when they did, it was with all the solemnity of one swearing an oath, because they were. And when they did, it felt like a final decision and it felt like surrender and it felt like being bound and it felt like being free.

  
She looked at them a moment longer before breaking, suddenly, into a breathy laugh, and oh fuck it, they kissed her, and then did it again and again near the side of her mouth, then pulled back just so they could look. "Hurley, where..." She turned her head to the side and wiped her eye with her palm, still smiling. "Where the hell did you come from?"

  
"What do you mean?"

  
"You're impossible, you know that?" Her voice was hushed, half-cracked. "Seems like you dropped out of the sky and haven't stopped doing impossible things since. I just...I don't know. I don't know how someone like you exists."

  
"Impossible, huh? So you still think we couldn't do it? That I won't do what I need to get you everything you want?" They grinned as they shook their head slowly. "Devil, I love it when I get to prove you wrong."

  
Their vision had begun to blur again with the tears, but they thought they saw her smile once more. "You've always been pretty good at that."

  
"I know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	11. Chapter 11

"Did you know they say one in ten rams are gay?"

"Wow. Can't believe you're one in ten rams, Ram."

"I'm serious. Anyone who's kept sheep will tell you. We had a few back in the day."

"Ok, but, like, how do you actually know what rams' preferences are? Like did you ask? Maybe, like, more than one in ten are gay and you just wouldn't know it."

Hurley stopped and thought. "You're right. I bet most rams are probably gay and we just don't know.

"I wonder how many ravens are gay."

"More, probably."

"Definitely more. All ravens are gay, actually."

"And trans."

"_And trans._" The smooth muscle of Sloane's shoulder shifted under Hurley's palm. She had started tensing up again.

They immediately pulled back a little. "Do you want to take a break?"

"Yeah, might be a good idea."

They moved so that their upper body was no longer splayed across her bare back. She rolled over so that she lay on her back instead of her belly in the shade of the large stone. Hurley watched her watching the sky for a moment, then pressed up against her arm and kissed her jawline a few times. She closed her eyes slowly, exhaled deeply through her nose. Her hand went up to comb slowly through their hair, massaging their scalp. "Do you think you'd rather stop for today?" they asked.

"No, I want to see if I can go a little longer. Just need to move every now and then."

"You're doing so good. I'm almost done with the outlining."

"Yeah?" She sat up and twisted her neck around trying to get a look at her shoulder blade. "How's it look?"

They held up the mirror to her back to show her the drawing that they had made there. As requested--a ram's skull haloed from behind by a stylized, eight pointed sun. The black ink detailing on its huge, curling horns came close to covering up the white scarification there. "Do you like it?"

"I love it. We should pick a day this week to try and start tatting it. Don't want to wait too long and make you have to redo the drawing."

"I don't mind redoing it. Hey, if I keep doing it, it'll just turn out better and better, won't it? We can take as long as you need."

"Well. I also want to match you, like we said."

They ran two fingers along their thigh. They couldn't feel where they had tattooed the image of a black bird surrounded by flying feathers there a week ago, but they knew it was there.

"Actually, can you prick me really quick?" she asked. "Just so I know what it feels like."

"Of course." They pulled out the small needle that they used for stick-and-pokes. The idea of matching tattoos had been hers, but that didn't mean she would find the process easy. Even though they touched her back all the time by now, taking a sharp implement to the scarred part of her skin was another matter entirely. It had taken time just to build up to having the ink pen there.

She barely reacted to the poke in her arm. "That's not bad," she said quietly, turning her bicep this way and that. "By the way, I don't suppose there's any way to stop you from checking out town tonight."

They whipped their head to look at her. "What? I never said that."

"No, but you insisted on coming this way..." She nodded toward Goldcliff. Far in the distance, the squat buildings looked like the stone ruins of a long fallen temple. The roads converged there like river tributaries. "Even though you know how much traffic there is around here and how many people could see us. So you must've been thinking of heading into your old haunts or something, am I right?"

They put their head down and scratched their nail along the seam of their pants. "I wasn't...gonna go _into_ town. Just scope around there, maybe."

When they ventured a look at her again, they were reminded that a majority of all communication was nonverbal, as demonstrated by the grimace on her face, which communicated "yeah, right" better than perhaps words ever could. She rolled her eyes. "You're too fucking stubborn for me to even try to stop you. I'm gonna be somewhere right outside town then in case you need me. Just promise you won't do anything stupid."

"When have I ever done anything like that?" they asked, all innocence.

"Gods."

Much as she saw through them, she didn't have their plan all the way figured out. She didn't know that they were looking for signs of the person in the sash. If the papers they'd been scrounging up could be believed--and, in spite of the sensationalist reporting, they could--then the criminal had been in this area for awhile. They were moving, ever so steadily, towards Goldcliff, hitting up town after town on the way. They'd hit the biggest bank soon. It was only natural. And if trying to stop them was a long shot, well, Hurley had taken plenty of long shots in their life. They were, finally, going to try to stop a killer, a real one.

This was the season for patching wounds and putting things to right.

And besides, they'd leave for Xila before long. They might not have another chance to show that town how big they'd become since leaving.

* * *

They did not, in fact, do anything stupid. That was because this was only a bit of scouting, and there would be plenty of time to do stupid things in the coming nights, when they had not explicitly made a promise to the contrary. In any case, at that late hour, they didn't find the sashed person, though they crept through every main street they could multiple times. They hadn't expected to. Part of them had been hoping for at least a sign, though they hadn't a clue what that might be. It was just that they had to do something.

Several times, they'd been forced to flatten themself against a nearby wall and wait as people went past. They told themself that they were being as conscientious as possible. But they couldn't deny how they would look at the folks walking on by, none the wiser about their presence, and feel a little giddier about it every time.

They got to the meeting point on the outskirts of town, in the darkness where they'd parted with Sloane. They gave their whistle and waited.

And they waited.

They tried again, and all they got was the silent and empty world surrounding them, which at night seemed to see them far better than they could see it. The dark was thick enough to smother them. It had been awhile since they had been afraid of the desert's dark.

A lack of response, of course, meant one of three things: "I'm not here," "I'm not safe," or both. Which meant that every moment they spent in the immediate area was a moment too many. Instantly, they turned on their heel.

Then they turned back, to a swallowing black. They had no other idea where she might be. And they couldn't just look around for ages with no guidance, not if she was truly unsafe. That was something to be solved now. They stepped into the nothing of the night.

They were usually the getaway, not the one who snuck around. But there had always been the possibility that they would have to be stealthy. The only two things they heard in the horrible quiet were footsteps and the sound of her voice in their head. "What you do is," she'd told them long ago, "if you feel like someone's trailing you, don't hurry. Just keep your footsteps steady and slow, like you're sauntering, and listen for them in between the steps."

And sure enough.

They swung their fist around and connected with flesh on the first try. It was easy as a muscle reflex, and they thought, this is okay. Everything from the feeling to the blood in their ears was familiar to them. This is what they had always done, what they were used to. Only it wasn't.

Their one hit sent the darkness into frenzy. Shapes emerged out of it, were formed of it. Hurley hit and kicked and contacted what seemed to be the night itself, but still it kept coming like waves when they were already neck-deep in water. Hands, hands all over them. If there wasn't one at their collar, there was one at their back. They hadn't any idea how many combatants there were, but more than they had ever faced alone before. Far more.

It didn't take more than seconds. They were pushed to the ground so hard and fast that they felt both of their knees scrape open and sensed the sand sticking to the moist wounds. They didn't stop, couldn't stop furiously trying to pull away. They'd pull their arms from their own sockets if they had to. But instead some of the hands shoved down on their shoulders, and others clapped irons around their wrists, and they had never quite understood, before that moment, the finality of a chain and of the click a cuff made when it snapped shut on a body. Now they did. They almost paused, then, just for an instant, as the chill that was more than just the chill of metal shot through their nerves.

They were still fighting the bonds when a lantern light was thrust into their face. They were all ready to snarl at the visage who appeared in the glow, the man who had stepped up to loom over them, and then they got a look at his face and couldn't do anything at all. That was because what they saw was a ghost.

The pale face was perhaps wearier than they had ever remembered seeing it, more lines and cracks than smooth skin now, but it was solid still. They would know it anywhere.

And they were utterly conscious of themself now. They looked as they had then, they knew, just maybe with a few more scars as less kempt hair. It amazed them sometimes, when they saw their reflection in the river or a trough and saw how little their inward change showed on the outside. Same freckles and round cheeks and heavy-set build, same flaming hair for which the papers called them Red.

Did he think they looked the same in the lamplight as they had in front of the campfire? Was everything the same to him except the chains? If anything, they were the specter here.

Sheriff Bane looked down at them not with anger, but with perplexity, maybe sadness. "Everyone was saying, but I didn't think..."

They could say nothing to him. They just stared unblinking at him, breathing heavily from the fight.

His confusion slipped away. It left behind only a disappointment that was absolute. "What the hell happened to you?"

* * *

He had gotten Sloane first. Of course he had. It was easier to pick either one of them off when they were both alone.

The pair of them were walked into the jail together but then put in separate cells in a corridor that was lined with them. Sloane’s was almost all the way at the other end.

And while Hurley waited for their swollen eye to go down over the next day, they sat on the bench that passed for a bed inside their new cage and started to plan before they could start to fear.

They waited and kept waiting until they finally picked up the sound that they had been primed to hear all this time. Even now, it was familiar.

It was astounding, how little Bane's footfall had changed in three years. It remained quick but never rushed, solid but never lumbering in spite of his weight. Against the floor of the prison, the clack of his heels were clipped like speech. They knew the sound at once.

(Hurley wondered if they walked the same way they had three years ago. They doubted it--not after traversing sand and rock in boots too worn for any of that, not after pulling themself out of their old skin like a rattler to become something entirely different. But maybe there were things about people that could not be effaced.)

"Sheriff!" They scrambled off the bed and to the front of the cell just as he entered their line of sight. "Bane, I need to talk to you. Please."

At first, they grew terrified that he would not even acknowledge them. He did not even begin to slow his pace until he was almost past their cell, and by then, his back was to them. When he finally did come to a stop, it took an excruciating amount of time for him to finally turn around.

"You have to do something about the murder trial," they bust out as soon as he was facing them. The words blew out of them more quickly than they could take air in. "She didn't do it. Sloane didn't kill anybody, she couldn't have. I know it for a fact, and I know everyone in this town seems in a huge damn rush to convict, but--but you can change that! I know you can. People here listen to you, I'm sure they still do like they did before. Sheriff, please, this is the last thing I'll ever ask of you. I know what we did to get here and I'm not asking to get out. Just make sure it's fair. Make sure there's justice. You're good at that, so please." Their voice turned hoarse near the end. The cell was very hot.

The lines in his face might as well have been cracks through rock, for all that they shifted or loosened as they spoke. Finally, he asked, "Are you done?"

They had not felt small, not really, in a long time. Most everything in their life had been done in order to stave off the feeling, and up until that point, they had gotten good enough at it to not feel it at all anymore. They were too practiced at taking up space, at making their presence bigger than their body. But now, as Bane looked down at them from outside bars that stretched up to the ceiling in front of them, they felt tiny. Insignificant.

They just stared, plain dumb, for awhile. When they tried to speak again, their throat was so dry that they choked on their words at first. "I...you'll do something, right? You have to."

"What exactly is it you were expecting?" His voice lay flat and dead. "The Raven is gonna stand trial in front of a jury and judge from this town. There's not a thing I can do to change that. I don't know what kind of problem you have with that, but if she's innocent, neither of you should have much of an issue, should you?"

"But there's no hard evidence and it's all hearsay."

"You don't know what we--"

"All from people who are terrified and want someone to blame as quick as possible. You wouldn't let something like that go on."

"And I'll ask again," he said in a clean, cold voice. "What's your alternative?"

There was a terrible sensation bubbling inside the core of them. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to be angry at them, sure, but more so disturbed by the idea that the trial could be unfair. He was supposed to put that above everything else and acknowledge that there could be no tolerance for bias. He had to. They had to make him. They coiled their fingers around the bars and clenched until they felt the bits of rust against their skin. They had to think, now.

"There must be something we could...I could..." They stopped and picked their head up. They spoke the idea as it came to them, and as they did, possibility stretched out in front of them. "I could testify. Bane!" They were on the verge of shrieking, tone high with delight. "Please, let me speak at the trial. I know what actually happened to those people who got killed! I saw--"

"Weren't you the one just talking about hearsay and biased witnesses? And now you think people are gonna believe what you say just because you said it?"

"Well..." They began deflating as quickly as they had risen up. "Well, but at least there'd be someone on the side of the defense, and...and anyway, I know what I saw, unlike most everyone else there. I can help you get the real killer."

"And what good do you suppose the testimony of the Raven's partner-in-crime is gonna do?"

"I don't know, but you have to let me try!"

"First of all," he said--his gravel more of a growl now--"I don't have to do anything. And I particularly don't have to do what some outlaw told me to do, even if they thought they were going to get some kind of special treatment."

"I'm not asking you to do it for my sake!" They could hear the shrillness enter their voice, but they couldn't stop themself now. They were blown full of holes, and everything was ready to spill out of them. "You should do it because a person shouldn't die if you can't prove for certain that they did anything wrong, and you can't! You know you can't."

"Excuse me--"

"What about the gun you took off me? It's the same one you thought was the murder weapon years ago. Just compare it to the bullet casings you got from the crime scenes!"

"We can't confirm that it was the same weapon from three years ago, so it's worthless." He began to turn away from them. "Trial's in two days. There's no way I can arrange for you to be on the stand in that time."

"Yes you fucking can!"

"Alright, that's enough!" They had never heard him raise his voice so suddenly, so sharply. It sent a bolt through their chest. They fought the urge to recoil from him. "You're done making the decisions around here, Hurley. You lost the right to do that a good long goddamn time ago."

Their jaw worked like the handle of a broken water pump as they tried, over and over, to speak. They were hunched over, felt themself ready to fall on their knees. Shrinking by the minute. They glanced in the direction of Sloane's cell. Was she hearing all this? Dreadfully, it seemed impossible for her not to. "Bane, please..." Their voice creaked. They did not finish the sentence. They could not make themself give voice to what they thought: _Don't take her from me._

He looked at them while they couldn't bear to meet his eyes. Then the footsteps returned and receded from them.

Their taut jaws squeezed together until they ached, until the teeth seemed prime to splinter. It had to be that way. They would have simply started screaming otherwise.

They had no sense of the time that passed as they stalked in circles around the cell. They spent most of it trying to regain control of their breathing. It had become too fast and too shallow. They were in the pull of a river current, trying to stick their head above the surface to take a too-short breath before being swept back under the whitewater. What could they do? They couldn't stand it much longer. What was there to do?

When at last a metal tray of food slid beneath the bars of their cell and rattled against the floor, they realized that it was near evening, and they had been at this for the better part of two hours. The thought of eating now filled them with revulsion. But they kept looking at what had been laid out before them.

The spoon on the tray glinted in the late light. They studied its blunt end, how it flared out a little at the bottom. Their heart was no longer kicking quite so frantically. Now they thought. They thought hard.

There was something. There was always something.

They picked up the spoon, held it behind their back, and started mechanically scraping the bottom edge against the stone wall. All the while, they looked at the bars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	12. Chapter 12

Three days. That was all it took to assemble a trial. With their hands gone white around the bars, they watched Sloane get led out on the way to the town's church-turned-courthouse and raged to themself, stalking up and down the eight-foot width of the cell. They would've broken head-first through every wall of this building if it meant getting to be there. The stuffy air buzzed, or maybe that was just the pressure of the blood running through their head. 

And then that footfall again on the empty floor. Steady and driving as a hammer on a railroad spike. 

Bane kept his gaze forward. He didn't even intend to acknowledge them. He would hear them, though. 

"You really think you're in the right here, Sheriff?" Hurley injected the last word with as much bile as they could. 

He didn't look their way immediately. His face remained in profile. They only saw his flesh drawn downward into a deeper frown. "I have no obligation to defend myself to you."

"Would you really be able to defend this to anyone?" they shot right back. 

"You'd better just quiet d--"

"No, I won't be quiet! You know something's wrong here! I know you know it."

"Do I?" He was suddenly looking at them head-on. "I'll tell you what I know. I know that I'm charged with making sure that there's due process in places like this, places where people prefer a nice and easy shoot-out to some slog of a trial. That's my job, to give everyone a chance at that. To prevent goddamn vigilante justice. What happens after that is beyond my control."

"So you're fine with handing off someone who might be innocent to a pack of wolves." They could see the slow clench of his jaw, but before he had a chance to speak, they went on in a tone that was softer but no less raw. "It's not beyond your control. People in this town trust you. You could use your influence! You could make sure that people out there aren't so scared and are willing to wait for a trial that's actually fair. Please, I know you can do that, please."

As soon as they said that, something in him appeared to loosen. His face opened up, or began to, and suddenly they could see the hazel of his eyes that had once been shielded by his furrowed brow. They caught the light coming in. "Influence..." He seemed to test the word inside his mouth, roll it around like the inedible pit of a fruit. Realization had hit him, recognition of a new opportunity. They were sure of it.

And then he said, "You really think whatever influence I have can do a damn thing here?"

Something came up from behind them and knocked them down, like on the night that they had been caught. "Yes? Why...why wouldn't it help?"

Bane sighed and shook his head, less like the hardened lawkeeper he was and more like a disappointed schoolteacher. "You still don't get it, do you?" he mumbled. Then he met their gaze. "There's nothing anyone can do to change the mind of a mob if they've already decided their ideas are fact. I've seen it again and again. No matter what, if people walk into that courtroom thinking that the defendant's guilty or innocent, then they're going to walk out thinking the same. Almost doesn't matter what you show them to prove otherwise, when they're that far gone. Believe me, I've tried and tried to make it fair and failed, and then I decided all that could be done was to bring wanted folks back here instead of letting them die in the street or in the desert. That's all I'm capable of. The law's not impartial, Hurley. People with opinions have their hands in the law."

Absurd as it was, they wanted to believe him. In the face that was now almost grandfatherly to them, they thought they might find something noble, like they had before. They could scour the cracks running through it for something that they knew from years ago.

Unfortunately, all they found was a coward.

"Maybe I'm the reason you ended up here," he said.

They tried to detect any sign of mocking or menace in his tone, and found none. 

His voice was heavy and dragged itself across the floor. "I think you wouldn't have gone out there with me three years ago if you'd understood that. If I'd made you understand it. Then you wouldn't be in this sorry sort of state--"

"I'm not."

His eyes snapped to them again. 

"I'm not sorry." Their breath was warm as they held it in their chest. "I refuse to be sorry about any of it. I did what I had to do, and I was happy while I did it. I am never going to apologize for any of it to anyone, least of all you."

"Well, that's mighty wonderful for you, isn't it?" He began to walk away. 

"Bane!"

The sheriff of Goldcliff stopped, but did not turn around. 

"You let this happen and you've got blood on your hands, Bane, and you know it."

The moment they said it, he kept pounding out of the hall and away from them. 

Sloane wasn't back until evening. When finally they heard the click of the lock as the hallway door was opened, the sound went through them like a bullet to the sternum. 

And nobody at all had to tell Hurley what that judge had said. They saw it all in her face, in the ashen color that had settled onto her skin like dust and in the tight press of her lips. Her wide eyes that took in everything around her and saw none of it. 

Hurley didn't get scared. Not because they were brave, but because, in this moment, they had no room for fear. They felt for the place under the bed sheet where they had hidden their makeshift metal chisel and struggled against the urge to take it out now. They would wait until dark as they'd been doing. 

Nobody here was about to hang.

* * *

Time moved too quickly and not at all. At night, it took only a few hours for the moon to rise above the frame of the cell's barred window, and after that, they had no way of tracing the hours. The guards didn't even change shifts regularly enough to mark the time, and anyway, they stood out of view past the iron door most times. 

All they could do was keep picking. If they had to guess, it took maybe two hours of trying to loosen the bars before their knuckles began to stiffen. They weren't sure how long it took before they began to ache, but by then, their hands had become locked into the same few motions and begun performing them like a pair of automatons. Dig in, twist, dig in again. By then, they had usually managed to push through a wave or two of exhaustion, banged their head against the stone wall a few times if the temptation to nod off began to overtake them. 

Sometimes, in the dark, they hardly remembered why they were doing it at all. Their thoughts became less about escape, in all its uncertainties and possibilities, and more about what was immediate to them. The future fell away and their life became the window and its cool metal and the small, square swatch of stars that it allowed in. It seemed that they had been doing it since they had come into being. It seemed that their bones had always hurt, that they had always had indentations in their flesh from where they grasped the blade. 

And yet, every morning, when there was finally enough gray light to see what they had accomplished, they found it to be far less than expected. It had to be impossible, that a full night's work resulted in a few millimeters of chipped-away concrete. Especially when the night was eternal. 

They had been at it for gods-know-how-long when they heard the sound. Their drooping head jolted upward. Before then, they had barely realized that they had begun to slouch. 

At first, it might have been nothing more than a sigh or a heaving. Moments later, there were more noises like it coming down to them from further up the corridor, until they settled into a rhythm, coming out with every exhale. The subdued sobs sounded like the call of a mourning dove, somewhere between a whimper and a moan. 

Hurley's own chest seemed to constrict on them. Gods knew it would have squeezed the tears out of them, too, if they had thought it would do them any good. Instead, they swallowed, twice, hard. They did not let their knees drop out under them and collapse onto the dirty floor. They went up to the front of the cell and listened a moment longer. Then, they whistled. Long, short-short. 

The sound stopped, but there was no other response. 

They tried again, at a slightly higher pitch. This time, there was a long pause, and they thought that they might get nothing until they heard the reply. The second, lower note dragged out longer than normal. 

"Sloane?" they called gently, trying to keep the tremor out of their own voice. They waited a moment to see if the guard would hear and come in, but there was no noise from outside the cell bloc. "Angel, shhh, it's alright. It's going to be okay, love." She released a quivering breath that was perhaps meant to be a laugh, and they went on, "It is. I promise it is."

"Well, nothing to be done now, huh?" Her breathing was loud. They weren't sure whether it was because she was struggling through the tears, or because it sounded louder in the quiet of the cells, or both. Either way, they heard her inhale several times before she finally managed to speak, croaking out, "I'm scared out of my fucking mind, Hurley, I really am." 

"I know." They pressed their forehead against the bars. They wondered how long they would have to apply pressure before the metal wore away. "But you're alright. There's always something to be done. I promise there is."

She sniffed, tried to suck everything back into herself. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I just...I had a dream that shook me up." Another long pause. They closed their eyes and listened to her breath and could imagine, for a moment, that they heard it next to their ear. "I want you here."

Up until that moment, they had never heard her sounding rawer. She had been positively stripped bare. "I am here."

"You know what I mean, though."

"Yeah, I know." They had their arms wrapped around their shoulders. "I'll get back to you. I'd find any way back to you." 

"Hurley, do you..." She seemed to choke on the rest of the words and fell silent again. 

"Yes?" they nudged. "Do I what, darling?"

"Do you regret--"

"No." After they said it, they briefly glanced toward the big door, sure that they had been heard. More quickly, but no less emphatically, they went on, "I...I regret that I led us here and that I didn't knock those fuckers out cold when I got caught. I regret thinking I could do anything. But Sloane, I don't regret you or the rest of it for an instant. I won't even entertain that. I don't regret my life. And I'll tell you what I told Bane--I'm not even a little sorry."

"I thought you'd at least regret that you got mixed up in this enough to end up here." Her voice had become deflated. The fear had drained from it and left only dregs of dull exhaustion. They could tell just by listening. She was so, so tired. Horribly, they thought of the girl who had collapsed in a cave after a day and two nights of running. 

"'Mixed up' my ass. I'm not some damsel. I made all those choices. I was right there with you." Even now, pride swelled in them. "How about you? Do you regret anything? About us, about what we did? Be honest with me. Can you really say you're sorry any of it happened?"

She seemed to think about it. Then: "No. I think it's selfish that I can't, but I can't."

"I hoped you'd say that." When she said nothing in return, they went back to the window. "Have you been eating?"

"Little bit."

"Good. Keep doing it, if you can. You're going to need that strength."

There was a moment of processing. "For what?"

"For when we get out of here."

It took so long for her to answer that they started picking at the bars again. After maybe a minute, they heard from her, "Are you trying...?" She trailed off again. Then, finally, disbelieving: "You're out of your goddamn mind."

"Sure am," they answered. They felt the edge of their mouth lift up. The sensation had become unfamiliar to them in the past several days.

Her laughter was as hushed as her crying and made their chest stir in the same way. "You really don't quit, do you?" She sniffed. "I don't know how you do it. I never have."

It wasn't as though it had ever been a choice. They had only ever done what they had to do. Anything they had to do. "Well, I promised. Can't get around a promise, can I?" They took a deep breath and continued, more quietly, "I'd move the earth for you, love. You know that."

"I think you finally rubbed off on me, little Red, 'cause I believe you. I don't know how, but I do. You're just...it's like no matter what happens, you're just ready to charge right into it, sure as the sun, and I think it's fucking insane that I'm the one who's been around to see you do it. I don't even know. I've never seen anything like it." 

"Raven steals the sun," they replied, almost to themself.

When she spoke again, her voice held enough love to drown them. "Or you're just an arrogant bastard and think you know everything."

"That too, of course." 

"I can't believe how far I went with you." They barely picked up on that. She seemed to say it to herself. "I can't begin to think about how lucky I've been. To have you fall in my lap. I've been so lucky up until now."

They stopped their chipping at the window for a beat. "You're not going to die," they said, just loudly enough for her to hear.

It seemed, for awhile, that that would be the end of it. Minutes must have gone by. 

"I think it will be okay." It was barely audible, but Hurley made it out. "One way or another, I think you're right. Hey, you should sleep."

They tried to feel for how much they had worn away from the bars. "I will when I can," they murmured. 

For awhile, they thought she had gone back to sleep.

Then her voice drifted to them again, like a breeze. First humming, then words to accompany the whispered melody, just enough for them to make out. _There ain’t no kneeling in that land, there ain’t no kneeling in that land..._

They closed their eyes, and for a moment, their world was the sound of her.

* * *

And then, days later, the morning came in red. 

They woke up to cold metal on their face and bloody streaks of cirrus cloud outside. They jerked up, from where they had fallen asleep with their head pressed against the window bars, and tried to pinpoint the source of the clanging that had alarmed them enough to awaken. 

They looked into the hallway in time to see a pair of law-keepers with guns at their sides walking past. Neither looked at Hurley. The two simply walked by. 

Minutes passed, probably. Hurley had no way of telling. They stood frozen in the center of the floor in their cell and found nothing that they could reach out to for stability. Their vision stayed slightly blurred. Everything had the strange quiet found in dreams.

Then the guards came back. Sloane was with them, walking between them. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, not behind. They wondered if she noticed, if that was any small comfort to her.

The whole time she passed by the cell, she was looking at them. Her gaze clutched theirs desperately. They had not seen her since the day of the trial. They had longed and feared to see her, to know what state she had been in all this time. Now they had no choice. She had gone a little paler, and her oily hair fell almost all the way in front of one eye. Still she kept her eyes on them, looking almost too much in shock to be scared. She never called out to them. They wanted to scream to her, but nothing could have come out of their mouth in that moment. They felt the world turn underneath them while they stood stock-still and could only spectate. They were powerless to stop the spinning. 

She craned her neck backward to keep looking at them as she was walked past their cell. Then she was gone.

And that could not be it. That was not the last vision they had of her. It couldn't be. There was something. They had to think. There was always something. But the only thing that came to mind was her face, as they had just seen it, haunted and exhausted. 

And they saw, too, the life that she had been meant to have, that she was going to have with them. They saw memories of what had not yet happened. Image after image of her light and unbound, somewhere she could learn not to be afraid of growing old anymore. Where pain flaked off her like worn scales rather than clinging to her skin, slowly making her new. The life that they had tried to get for her. They saw it all in visions clear as a prophecy, saw it in flashes before their eyes as it all fled away from them, and this was the thing about death, which was not unbearable in itself but in the way it exiled the surviving from the rest of existence forever. They remembered from when they were younger, from their mother. Death marked the surviving like scars marked the face of a colony leper. They didn't belong with the dead and could no longer belong in the world of the living, where everything was strange now because it kept on going while they remained as still and petrified as a stopped heart. They were an exile from reality. They lived now in the limbo of that bright world they had promised. They thought of what they would have done beside her, how they would touch her and daily track with their hands how her callouses slowly softened and faded. They were meant to be married. 

A shout and a powerful slam jolted them out of themself. They heard one of the guards bark, "Hey!" and then a second bang, a grunt of pain. There was the frantic scuffle of feet on the floor. They felt it all in the very core of themself. They had never heard her scream like that. It was fury, not pain. And then just one set of footsteps rushing down the hall, getting louder.

Suddenly, she was before them again just outside their cell, chest heaving with life, and she had a look on her face that they had never seen before, something furious and full of desperation, but the sort of desperation that is antithetical to helplessness, that is the reason anything has ever struggled to survive, and all the while her eyes drove into them like she was trying to live inside them and meld with their mind as she shouted, "Kiss me! Right now!"

Later, the thing they would remember most was their fists gripping her collar and pulling her right up against the bars. There was nothing poetic in it any more than there was something poetic in the whistling wheeze of a half-drowned person sputtering out a breath. They found no closure in the act. They kissed her because it was one more way of pulling her in, of holding and hiding her inside themself. They knew no other way, now, of keeping her safe. They were so close. And the fabric between their fingers. They held everything. For an instant, they made themself believe that they could spirit themself past the barrier that kept them from her if they simply willed it enough.

They didn't. As quickly as she had come to them, they no longer felt her on their lips and in their grasp. The guards pulled her away and with that severed blood vessels, tore apart the connections in places where the two of them had grown into each other like a knife trying to separate conjoined twin calves. They saw her face again with cheeks wet and shining, and not from her own tears. She didn't try to fight anymore, only looked at her with great green eyes almost aglow in the dim light and said, "I'm sorry. I love you. I'm so sorry, Hurley," and they thought they called her name, or tried to, but as they did one of the law-keepers hit her in the back of the head with the meat of his palm so that she faced forward and down, and then the door closed behind her. 

Hurley was dying. They had never been more certain of anything, knew it as surely as they used to know themself. Their senses left them. The world became a blurred slurry before their eyes. All that reached their ears was a constant, high-pitched keening like a dog whistle. They thought they were screaming but could hear none of it. This had to be what it felt like. They wouldn't wish dying on anyone. Their breath escaped them, had left the room along with her. If this was what she would feel like, if this was the way she felt right now--

Something dug into their hand.

At some point, they had fallen to the floor. As they groped in the dark, they came upon something other than the grit of the ground. The chill of it made them freeze. It was thin and made of metal. Once they regained enough control of themself to do so, they closed their hand around it, slowly, like a person becoming un-numb, and kept squeezing down until the thing's teeth bit into them. 

They looked at the thing they held, that had been dropped within their reach just beyond the bars, and found what they had thought it to be and what they had thought impossible. They had a silver key. 

Everything washed over them like the downdraft winds at the center of some great storm. They felt the quiver in their grinning lips and breathed a laugh and heaved a sob as they whispered, "You little thief."

Everything became fast and automatic. They reached around to unlock the door to their cell and shoved past to run down the hall, then doubled back to grab the one bar that they had managed to carve away from the window, then came back. When they thrust the key into the lock of the iron door, it stuck and would not turn. They tried again, dropped the thing, kept trying, kicked the door. They were too angry to be afraid, too ready to tear the damn thing down if they had to. They hadn't done this to be stopped at this last barrier. No goddamn way.

They alternated between testing the strength of the iron and running their hands over the keyhole. There had to be something here that could serve as a lockpick. Hardly different from a lion pacing a cage. Then, from the outside, they heard a pounding and jumped back several steps. The shunting sound of the lock and the jangle of keys came to them, and a moment later, light entered the chamber. The guard set her eyes on them for just the split second it took them to swing at her head with the bar in their hand. They landed a hit at her temple and watched her drop. In spite of themself, they still felt the smile on their face, the air on their teeth. Sharp an aim as ever.

They crouched next to the woman and noted the rise and fall of her chest several times. She would live, as they had known she would. The hit hadn't been as hard as it could have been. This wasn't her doing, after all. They dropped the bar and traded it for the shining gun that sat inside her holster. They checked to find three bullets in the six-shooter's cylinder and closed it, started running, stopped, opened it again. 

They dumped all but one of the shells into their hand, then let them ting onto the floor. A moment later, they shot out the door. There would not be needless death today on their watch. And besides, they only needed one shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


	13. Chapter 13

It occurred to them as they thundered in the direction of the gallows that they had thought none of this through.

Well, that wasn't quite true. They had thought through everything up to holding up the guard protecting the stable until they could get their horse back, and had done so. And they knew what to do with their single bullet. But as they approached the execution site at the center of town, they yanked the reins back hard enough that the horse reared a little and whinnied in complaint. They panted, wild, in the noon heat.

Ahead of them, people thronged. They bumped their shoulders against one another as they shifted on their feet in the bright sun, crowding in like huddled songbirds inside a tree hollow to get a view. People with wide-brimmed hats and parasols to keep their faces from burning, shopkeepers and old retired ranchers. Some children. Hurley thought they recognized a few from behind.

And ahead of those folks, a woman on a raised platform, a wooden bar, and a rope with a loop in the end, swaying like a loose thread of spider silk in a light breeze.

Hurley urged the horse back a few steps, back into one of the narrow, shadowed streets that led into the square. They dismounted and tried to calm the whirring in their mind. They fantasized, briefly, about surging through the mass of people, cutting through it with their body. They likely would've, too, were they not convinced that doing so would earn them a dozen bullet holes before they made it five feet. Half the town had drained into this place. Agonizingly, they had to wait. There was one chance at this.

Far away, Sloane was led up to the noose. Now, her hands were tied. From this distance, it was impossible to know what she felt, staring at the head-sized loop of rope like she was looking at the empty frame of a mirror. All they knew was that she didn't move as it slipped over her head, and the way their stomach squeezed at the sight. She must've been afraid. They were afraid. They tried not to let their hand quiver. Nobody stood immediately around her now. Nothing held her in place but the noose.

They heard the voice of the executioner as the charges were read, but they couldn't make out the words and didn't care to. Instead, their eyes drifted to the man who stood off to the side of the platform, still atop his horse. Bane was there. Hurley could tell he was looking right at Sloane. However she must've looked with the coil around her throat, he saw it and did not flinch. Unmoved and unrepentant. They were finished waiting now. They raised their weapon, held it steady as they had always done.

Several things happened once they took the shot.

The gathering fell into frenzy. Where there had been a crowd, there was now a moving swarm. People shouted and knocked into one another, trying to get out, trying to find others deep inside the mass, trying to crane their necks for the source of the bang. The sea of heads rocked and roiled. The shifting left openings.

Bane didn't hesitate. His open mouth looked black as he yelled to the other armed guards standing all around, sending them into a scramble to find and mount horses. His eyes were shaded by his hat, but he scanned the area back and forth.

And one look and they could tell that the bullet had found home, as they had known it would. The rope had been severed from the bar in one shot, and now the loose end dangled harmlessly from Sloane's neck. They could've sobbed. She was tethered to nothing.

She took a single, frozen moment to stare straight down at the frayed rope resting against her chest. A moment was all she had. After that, the hangman had the wherewithal to move towards her, reach out a hand toward her bound wrists. She had none of it. In a flash, she charged into him and drove her shoulder into his chest, slammed all her weight into him until he lost his footing and fell from the side of the wooden stage. She watched him fall flat and disappear before looking around wildly, sharp and ready as ever and, gods, alive, and then jumping herself into the surge of bodies to disappear among them.

They shot out into the sunlight, galloping along the moving outskirts of a crowd that was beginning to disperse. They couldn't see her. Their gaze flitted over the throng in search of a head of gleaming black hair as they rode toward the front, nearer to where she had been. A few gunshots zinged through the air, though exactly where from, they weren't sure. The bullets didn't come close enough for Hurley to see their path. That would likely change once they had a team of trained shooters after them. The both of them had to be gone before then.

In the rush, it seemed as though they would never set eyes on her until the very moment that she came bursting out at them, all of her there in the light right in front of them, and even as she ran to them she still had this look of surprise, of marveling. They couldn't believe it either. Hurley grabbed her hands to cut her bonds and pulled her up onto the horse, and they were high above the rest out there on that broad bright afternoon and probably a good five seconds away from being blown to hell and they could not have possibly given less of a shit in that moment, because for this instant, they were holding her, taking her in, taking just a second to know for certain that she was with them.

"Holy shit," she gasped into their ear. "Holy shit, Hurley, you did it!"

They laughed before the lump rising in their throat could cut them off. "Of course. I had to come back for you."

"You're s--"

The world moved beneath the two of them. Their horse nervously stomped and picked up her feet as people surged around her. Hurley wiped their eyes and tightened their hold on the reins. "Like always?"

"Damn right, Ram."

Hurley tossed away the now useless gun and set the wind screaming into their face.

As they had expected, the gunshots came after them like barking dogs. Even when they couldn't see the pursuers behind them, they heard the bangs and sometimes saw the bites the bullets took out of the building corners as they disappeared around them. They had to get out of town. It was too easy for them to get cut off here, too easy for someone to intercept their path.

It wasn't long before they heard the hoofbeats come up on them too. Enough of them to form a drone in the air, swarming sound. It seemed to come from all directions.

When they heard someone get close behind them, Hurley ducked into the narrowest squeeze between two buildings that they could. The horse's belly nearly scraped the sides. For someone less skilled, there would barely be room to ride, let alone toss a lasso or fire a gun.

"Hurley!"

They turned in time to see Sloane, now turned around and sitting backwards on the horse, kick out and make contact with the chest of a woman riding directly behind them. The chaser's neck snapped back as she dropped from her horse, which trotted to a stop. They lost both woman and beast in the dust they kicked up as they came back out from the thin road and into the sun.

"That was amazing!" they shrieked.

"I know! Lots of people are about to come out of the woodwork though! We've got to--shit, Hurley, look--"

But Hurley had already looked and they had already seen the man that had appeared in front of their path, pointing the long nose of a rifle at the pair of them and stupidly shutting one eye to aim. They had also seen how, as they refused to slow their horse down in the slightest, that screwed-shut eye had opened and turned wide while they kept coming at him. He was too surprised to fire just then, or maybe had gotten orders not to fire unless necessary--he wore a deputy badge, after all--and the minuscule moment of hesitation was all they needed. Hurley slammed the meat of their palm into his trigger hand just as their horse collided with his, and the gun turned up to face the air just at the instant it went off. A few seconds' struggle later, and the barrel was against his chest as they shoved him off his ride.

They were about to ride off when they heard Sloane grunt behind them and turned to see her half-slid off the saddle. From the ground, the man had reached up and was now gripping the edge of her shirt in one fist, pulling her down with him.

And then he wasn't, because as they pulled Sloane back up onto the horse by the hand that she held out to them, she kicked at his wrist and heard a shout and a series of snaps like the pop of burning kindling, and while they'd probably feel guilty about it later if there was a later to be had, at that moment they had an all-around great fucking time breaking his bones.

Once she was back up onto the saddle, they got a good look at the gorgeous horrible tangle of her hair. The grin on her face was downright goofy, and while Hurley was fairly certain that Sloane had never been a smitten little schoolgirl, she certainly looked for all the world like one as she kept gazing at them, if they did say so themself. "I am so in love with you," she breathed.

Once out of town, they were back to what they knew better than anything. They headed towards the somewhat less steep side of Goldcliff's plateau and took the switchbacks down. Even if their horse wasn't the fastest in a straight sprint, no one could navigate sharp turns at the speed that they did. They were sure of it. They ate up the ground beneath them, increased the distance between them and the pack of hunters. This was what they did. This was what they were meant to do, and there was no one better to do it. They were high on the wind that flooded their mouth. Even while close to the edge as they rode the rocky trails, they closed their eyes now and then, just for an instant, and soared. There was nothing in the world but the earth and the sun and the horse and the saddle and Sloane.

And Sloane. Sloane hardly knew what to do with herself. She laughed unstoppably, tossed her head back like a foal at play and let her hair blow back to slap her in the face. The remains of the noose still hung loosely around her neck like a tie, and the trailing rope blew out behind her as they rode, and it was now that they realized that they had never seen her so free of fear. "I love you!" She screamed it more than once unbidden, sometimes to the sky, like it was a war cry. She kept reaching around to kiss their cheek. "I love you! I'm so proud of you!"

Quite frankly, they weren't doing much better.

Hurley heard a chuffing and realized that it was the horse beneath them. She panted with every gallop as foam gathered at her lips. By all accounts, they should have slowed her to at least a canter long before now. Instead, they kept weaving down and down towards the river below at top speed. They weren't about to last much longer under the high sun.

Suddenly, behind them, Sloane cussed and reached around to yank back on the reins. She brought the horse to a halt, then turned it all the way around and sped back in the direction that they'd come from. They could hear the storm of the other horses' hooves as they got closer. Sloane went until they reached an alcove, more like a glorified crack in the side of the canyon wall. She slid off the saddle and beckoned for them to come with her.

"Sloane, what--" Their feet had hardly hit the ground before she was shoving them into the opening.

"Stay there," she said before hurrying back over to their mare and grasping the remains of the noose in both hands after removing it from her neck. They heard her say, "Sorry about this, Horse," then watched her hit the animal's gray flank as hard as she could with the end of the thick rope. With a squeal, she kicked out with her back legs instinctively, barely dodging Sloane's head, before running off. "Move! Go on!" she screamed in its direction.

She watched for half a second longer as it fled before turning around and squeezing into the space along with Hurley. Their chests were pressed together, wedged tight between the walls and one another. Sloane tried to bring Hurley closer anyway. As best she could in this cavern too narrow for her to fully extend her arms, she held them.

  
Through the thin opening, Hurley counted two horses go past at a full gallop, blowing right by them. They would have liked to say that they had managed to give the hunters the slip in just one instant, but it wouldn’t be that easy. It never was.

  
Together, they waited. At some point, they heard an echoing whinny a ways away that sounded like it could be their mare, but they couldn’t be sure. And they kept waiting while sweat glommed onto every inch of them. It went on for many minutes, certainly, but beyond that, they had no way of telling how much time had passed.

  
Again, the drum of hooves on sand. The sound came to them like rain on a roof growing heavier. It rolled toward them more slowly than before—the steeds had been slowed to a trot this time around—but it came from the opposite direction than before, as though their couple of pursuers had decided to double back and take another sweep through. And more besides. They couldn’t tell just by listening for how many other riders had joined them, but it was more than two now. Sloane must have decided to stop and hide after detecting others up ahead preparing to cut them both off. Now, it seemed, those who had intended to ambush them from the front had joined up with the ones chasing them from behind.

  
The horses passed in front of their small cavern at a fast walk. Four, maybe five sets of legs. They heard the urgent, hushed chattering of the riders as they went by, though the words were difficult to make out over the hoof beats. Hurley saw the dappled gray legs of their horse, too, among the rest. They saw her back up a bit and heard her snort in protest before getting tugged forward and past them.

  
The heat inside the crevice was a torment. The sweat fell in large drops from beneath their forehead and into their eyes. They couldn’t maneuver their arm enough to wipe it away. Their saliva was pasty and made them want to spit. As they breathed through their open mouth, first to catch their breath from the chase and then to try to cool down, they struggled to regulate the amount of air going in and out. Kept their exhales small and steady as possible, even when they wanted to gulp the hot air down. Every sound was magnified to them. It seemed that if they could hear their own breath, the people out there surely could as well.

  
In spite of the awful warmth, they kept Sloane’s body close to them. After a while, they pressed their lips into her shoulder to try to stifle the sound of their own breathing. They couldn’t have stood it for all that time without feeling her there with them.

  
The pursuers passed by many more times. They went by more slowly, perhaps more unsurely, each time, even as Hurley prayed that they would be able to get out of there soon. They heard the riders talk to one another about splitting up to go down different routes, then heard them return to talk about the nothing that they had found.

  
And finally, they heard Bane’s voice. Perhaps it was his authoritative tone or their own familiarity with his way of speaking, but his words rang out to them far more clearly than the rest. “Well, that’s it. We’re heading all the way back to the bottom of the river. They’ll have to come back to the water eventually.” Which was true. Eventually.

  
But for now, the sounds faded and left them alone. They listened and listened, and when they were afraid to let themselves believe it, listened more, but the people after them didn’t return.  
For the first time, Sloane disentangled herself from Hurley enough to look at them. They saw her ears twitch and swivel continuously without seeming to pick up on anything. She raised her eyebrows at them in a silent question, and they nodded.

  
One after another, the two of them stepped out almost on tiptoe, like nervous deer. The sun reflected off the yellow earth enough to make them squint, but the relief they felt at exiting the tight space was immediate. Looking around, they saw nothing in motion except the dust on the breeze. Still stiff and almost afraid to move, both slowly turned toward one another and started to give each other shaky grins.

  
And then the distant thunder returned on the cloudless day.

  
This time they knew it was just one horse and rider, but one was more than enough. And they had a horrible feeling about this one.

  
There was no time to think, and Hurley didn’t think. They moved. Turned around and wrapped their hands around the sharp juts of stone on the uneven rock face and started pulling themself up.

  
“Hurley!” Sloane called from just below.

  
“Come on!” They weren’t about to outrun this person on the horse. They would have to disappear another way. They could see the top, just meters above them. They could do it, both of them. They just had to climb fast enough.

  
They went and went despite the shiver in their tired muscles. At any moment, they expected a bullet to come and pluck them off the rock wall, send them wheeling to the ground like a bird struck by a stone. But it never did.

  
And that, more than likely, meant it was who they thought it was.

Up over the edge, and they were running again. On their feet, the muscles in their legs searing like their skin seared in the heat, running, running, wherever they could and with that pain only making them go harder--

The pair of them almost went clear over the cliff.

  
Sloane reacted to the sight of empty space a half-second before they did, digging her heels into the ground until she kicked up miniature dust storms at her feet. She held her arm out to stop Hurley and when they both skidded to a halt, the world ended. Before them, there was nothing. Rock the color of rust formed a canyon wall so flat and clean that it might as well have been sliced with some great knife. From the taking of this great cross-section of the planet was left nothing, just air, and then underneath all of the nothing, the green-blue twist of a river. Even from so far above, they could see the Grist’s fury, the white streaks of foam running through it. It was here that the water roiled up in defiance after having been squeezed tight between the two sides of the canyon, here where the rapids formed. Both of them watched it roll for a time as they came face-to-face with the long, long way down.

  
The two of them stood there, panting, for a time. Hurley watched a few drops of sweat fall from the front of their hair and water the dust beneath them and remembered that they had a body, that they were a body.

  
Sloane looked at them at the same time that they turned to her. It was strange, how there wasn’t the same panic as before on her face, not quite. If anything, it looked like confusion. Then, quite gradually, she turned to look behind her. They followed her line of sight.

  
Bane had his pistol in one hand, the lasso in the other hanging down by his side. They nearly laughed out loud. As if they were being presented with some sort of choice.

  
In a way that might have been infuriating precisely because it was so very matter-of-fact, he stated, “This has gone as far as it can go, I think.”

  
All Hurley could think about as they stared at him was the gun. The one they had thrown away. For a moment, they wondered whether they regretted it. Come to think of it, they wondered whether they regretted anything. They seemed to exist a couple of feet to the left of themself, watched themself not feel the fear that they likely should have, and found it strange that they didn’t. Terror scratched at the outside of their consciousness but could not quite penetrate it. Instead, they simply wondered whether things would have gone differently with their big iron. They daydreamed of their many impossible fates, of blowing him away before it even occurred to him to pull the trigger or else feeling his bullet blaze through them and send them off into the air like a shooting star.

  
Ridiculously, they had a song stuck in their head. _Set out runnin’, but I’ll take my time, a friend of the devil is a friend of mine..._

  
When they turned to Sloane, she still had her sights fixed on Bane. It was a moment before they caught her eye, and when they finally did, they found her, now, with the look that one might find on a lost child. Her gaze clung to them, pleading with them.

  
She looked as she had when they had first met her, filthy and run ragged and wild, bright-eyed, life itself. Her parted lips and the yellow sand in her dark hair and the scars on her face, all of it as welcoming and familiar to them as they path they had walked to their childhood home. Everything had led to them being here and looking at her, and would have no matter what they had done. It had always been unavoidable. There she was, just as they had always known her. Their girl.

  
In that moment, they could’ve collapsed under the weight of the knowledge of how lucky they were, that they were here and now, that they could see her. That no matter what, her eyes would be on them. How lucky they were. They would lay themself down now, fight or break for her. It didn’t matter. They would have followed her anywhere.

  
They had been wrong. There would be more killing today, one way or another. It simply wouldn’t begin with them. They had made enough choices.  
They were not about to atone for anything they had done, and they were not about to presume that they could protect her from the present or the past or the maybe nonexistent future. That was all alright. It wasn’t about them. Now was the time to stand beside and not in front of her. This would be left in her hands.

  
The longer Sloane looked, the more her bewilderment appeared to fade. Her eyes were no longer wide or wild. Slow realization seemed to settle over her and settle her, letting her shoulders drop. Anywhere, anywhere, in their mind like a mantra. Maybe she heard it, too. She nodded once, though at what, Hurley could not be sure.

  
They heard the thud of hooves as Bane moved his horse forward a few paces. Sloane cast a glare his way, looked at them once more, and finally stood up straight. She turned her entire body towards her captor. She hardly blinked as she took one slow, hard, deliberate step after another, directly backwards. When she reached the cliff, her foot hovered in the air for a moment before she stomped it down and planted it right at the edge. The stone beneath her crunched.

  
It was only then that she lifted her head to stare at him, chin up, legs apart. She was tall and stark black against the blue, blue sky.

  
His expression hardly altered. He only asked, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  
Even from where they stood off to the side, they could see the trembling of her clenched fists. Instantly, they went over and took her hand in theirs, as they did whenever she became restless in her sleep. Her shaking stopped as she squeezed them back repeatedly, like a pulse.

  
“Don’t be stupid. Step away from there, both of you.”

  
For the first time in three years, Hurley looked at him, really. Try though they might, they found nothing vindictive in him. With the way his shoulders slumped, he looked almost tired. It was the look of a man waiting for his old dry cow to up and die already—impatient for the inevitable, for the unpleasantness to come to an end. Here before them was the man who would take their fiancé’s life, or else let it be taken. That was unforgivable. But they were all out of anger for him. It wouldn’t have done them any good regardless.

  
They wouldn’t have shot if they could have. They recognized that in an instant. Even if they had kept the gun, and even if Bane hadn’t outdrawn them, they knew, damn well, that they wouldn’t have so much as taken aim. Maybe they hated him. A part of them did, certainly. They would die hating him. But even now, they knew, he hadn’t stopped being the man who had believed in them. He hadn’t stopped being the man who had wanted, once, to do justice.

  
“Sir.” They spoke calmly and clearly to their one-time mentor. “You can shoot us or don’t. Just know that you’re not going to get us. Not even our bodies.”

  
His jaw dropped. So, they noticed, did the barrel of the gun, almost imperceptibly. It appeared to go slack in his hand for an instant. He came forward, only to stop when he saw Sloane shift her weight to the ball of her foot. Now he was close enough that they could see his eyes move between the two of them, though they seemed to settle more often than not on Hurley. He was incredulous, even angry. It made them ecstatic. His fault for not expecting more from both of them. “Are you serious? You’re going to let me kill you here?”

  
Sloane’s glare subsided at that. She blinked at her feet. When she turned to Hurley, she looked them all over, as if searching for something, and seemed to find it. Bit by bit, the side of her mouth lifted into a smile. A hum came from her that was half a sigh and half a laugh and gods, how lucky, how impossible. She still had that grin on when she turned back to Bane. “Well,” she said, “better here than at the end of a rope, Sheriff.”

  
He gaped at her for a moment longer before his whole face hardened back up. Narrowed eyes peered out at them through a webbing of deep-set wrinkles, and then the gun was on them in earnest again, and it was okay. When they glanced at her again, she was looking at them too. It was all okay. If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight...  
And then all at once he lifted his strong arm high into the air and fired skyward. Twice.

  
For several seconds, they were certain that they had simply not felt the impact. That they could still feel the wind at their back and the fragile ground beneath their feet was incongruous with the sound they had just heard and felt blow through their chest.

  
A pulse. Her hand was still in theirs. They were not dead, they were not dead, they both lived and felt still.

  
Bane’s hand stayed up in the air for a moment before it dropped to his side. The pistol dangled. His face was illegible as he regarded them for a long, long time. After all that, all he said, quietly, was, “Don’t you ever come back around here.”

  
They accomplished a single, slow nod. He turned his horse around and left.

  
They didn't take their eyes from him until he had slipped from their sight, and then kept watching the dust that his horse had left behind as it walked away, and even after that continued staring after where he had been.

They only glanced away when they felt Sloane's hand slide from theirs. Like a sleepwalker, she took a few, half-stumbling steps forward. Then her knees hit the ground with a thud. She looked forward with her mouth parted, with something far beyond wonder, as if she had just been born. Wisps of her black hair lifted and fell in the breeze atop the canyon and they could barely fathom it. She was as incomprehensible as the divine.

They went up to place a hand on her shoulder, to comfort her, to feel the comfort of her. She looked at them, and they came spilling out of themself. They fell into the familiar warm darkness as they buried themself in her chest, held her close enough that they could not lose her.

She didn't embrace them back right away. Instead, as soon as their arms were around her, they felt her shudder and then turn limp, hands staying at her side. Her sobs stayed soft, and they loved every one, took solace in every sound that reminded them she was still breathing. Slowly, she collapsed into them, until at last she went to hold them and both stayed very still, pressed into one another as though keeping pressure against a wound. All around, the quiet desert let them be.

Hurley couldn't be sure how long they stayed like that. They wouldn't have objected to it being forever. They only began to pull back when they felt her lips moving against their neck. She kept on kissing them, everywhere she could, and in the breaths between each she mumbled something, the same sounds repeated like a prayer. Somehow, that’s what it was. “I love you,” over and over, in desperate wet whispers to ward off what she feared. “I love you, I love you.”

"It's okay." They tried to take in air through a throat turned raw by crying. They ran a hand over her shaking back. "It's okay, my darling. We're safe now. It's going to be alright."

Without hesitation, she nodded against them. "I know." She leaned back enough to look them in the eye and said nothing, only gave them a smile with tears running over her lips. She reached forward to brush the wetness away from their own cheeks and their hand went up to cover hers, to hold her fingers there.

For no reason at all, she started to laugh quietly. For no reason at all, they joined her, and it only made them cry more. Both of them kept on laughing and crying at the absurdity of it, that they lived still. Sloane swept them off the ground and spun them in the air while the pair of them whooped and screamed into the canyon that had not taken them. Every echo of their voice off the stone bounced back at them and it hit them again and again that they lived, that they lived.

When they finally calmed--though they were not sure if they would ever really be calm again, they were so electric, so filled up with the wild world around them--they both sat on the edge and watched the water. Sloane still breathed heavily. "Now what?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

Hurley shook their head slowly, chuckled. They hadn't been able to quit smiling. "Darling, I'm going where you're going. Wherever."

"Yeah, I guess we'd better get the hell away from here, huh?" She furrowed her brow at the silent rapids far, far down. "I..." She thought, then started again. "It's so weird. I think I want to go home. I've never thought like that before, I feel like I'm just ready to go home."

"Me too," they murmured.

"Not that I know where the fuck that would be."

They leaned in closer to her, nuzzled under her chin. "I'll help you figure it out. I don't care how long it takes."

She turned to kiss their forehead and sighed into their hair. They heard the smile in their voice without seeing it. "Yeah, you would."

They both had to leave soon. Neither made a move to go.

“I was wrong, you know.”

They opened their eyes. “About what, love?”

“Luck,” she said softly. “Said I wouldn’t get lucky three times. I can’t believe how stupid that was. I haven’t been unlucky once in three years.” She was looking up at the sky. “And it’s not even luck, is it? It’s just you. It’s just how you love.” Her lips on their neck again and again and again, always. “Fuck being lucky. You love me.”

"I do. Gods, I do.” Hurley came close enough to press their forehead to hers. “And do you know what, Sloane? I don’t want it to feel like luck or like anything extraordinary. I want you to take it for granted. I want you to get used to being loved like this the way you’re used to sunlight, and then I want to just keep loving you even more. That’s what I’d like.”

“You’re so melodramatic,” she said through fresh tears.

“You started it. And hey, you better watch yourself, Devil," they whispered with a grin. "I'll make a life with you if you're not careful."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me on tumblr @adventuresloane or @literalliterature, and definitely look at other excellent fics and art @theadventurebang! Also, consider reviewing if you liked it!


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